• Video: The story of Mohammed
• Video: Saving Mohammed
• Michigan State University: MSU Today

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN:  A very different medical story now.  It involves a 13-year-old Iraqi boy named Mohammed.  He just spent a year getting medical treatment in Michigan.  The many who made Mohammed’s journey possible is Major David Howell.  He served in Iraq with the Michigan National Guard.  Back home, he’s a physician’s assistant in a hospital emergency room.  In 2008 Major Howell was deployed in Ramadi, Iraq, when he noticed Mohammed in a crowd of women and children.

DAVID HOWELL:  He just kept looking at me, and looking at me, and looking at me.  And I just thought it was a little bit unusual.

WERMAN: Mohammed had sustained severe burns in a house fire as an infant.  The disfiguring injuries affected his head, the left side of hi face and his left arm.  That night Major Howell couldn’t stop thinking about him.  Two days later he tracked him down and brought him back to his combat outpost.

HOWELL: That’s when I found out that not only could he speak English, but that his father had been an interpreter for the United States Marine Corps at one of the combat outposts and that three years earlier, in 2005, the insurgents had discovered what his father was doing and had come to the family home and had slain him.  The following day when his uncle went down to the Ramadi General Hospital to identify the body, the insurgents were waiting for his uncle and they killed him as well. So once I learned that, and I saw how poor the family was, that really motivated me to try to find a way to help this family.

WERMAN: Well now Mohammed has had five surgeries in Michigan in the past year.  Tell me about the medical treatment and what it was like for him.

HOWELL: Well as you said, he had five surgeries and during that time he had his scalp completely reconstructed, his nose reconstructed, his left ear reconstructed and he had some skin grafts that now allow him to close his left eye.  And then he had two surgeries on his left hand so that his left hand has been restored to the extent that he can play baseball and do other things that kids can do.  I think that the surgeries really boosted his self esteem.  I think he’s going to have a much different life now that he’s back in Ramadi.

WERMAN: Was there a lot of culture shock for Mohammed that year in Lansing?

HOWELL: That was one of my concerns and so after I came back I went and met with some of the leaders at the Greater Lansing Islamic School and also the East Lansing Islamic Center and they were very helpful and they introduced me to a local family of Iraqi Americans with several children.  They became the host family so that when Mohammed, when I did bring him back here to the United States, he was able to live with a family that spoke Arabic, he was able to go to a school where Arabic was taught and he was able to continue to worship at a mosque.

WERMAN: Now one thing you probably had not anticipated from all of this was that you ended up by making some new friends, Muslim friends, in your own community in Michigan.

HOWELL: You know, I had served a previous combat tour over in Iraq in 2005 and at that point when we went on patrols, we always went in our armored humvees.  This time around, in 2008, we had much more interaction with the Iraqi people because we were on foot patrols, but our rules of engagement forbid us from going anywhere near any mosque or religious buildings.  So it was a new experience for me to go to a mosque.  And I can’t say enough good things about the Islamic community in Dearborn and in Lansing.  I’ve made some lifelong friends in the Islamic community which is kind of a twist for a soldier in the United States Army to be saying that.

WERMAN: How did Mohammed and his family relate to you as a member of the U.S. military and has that changed over the past year?

HOWELL: Actually when I first met Mohammed and he told me the story about how his father had been slain, he also told me how a group of Marines at a combat outpost then basically took him in and became a surrogate parent to him and allowed him to visit the combat outpost.  That’s where he learned to speak English.  But his family was extremely poor, the insurgents has told his mother that if she had any more contact with U.S. forces that they would come back and kill her and all six children, so he was very reluctant to have any contact with U.S. military forces, but I was able to convince her that I was serious about offering help and over a series of several meetings, she was able to trust me.  But as far as Mohammed went, he was very comfortable around men and women in uniform.

WERMAN: You know Major Howell you speak about your relationship with Mohammed in pretty sober terms.  You know, I brought him here and really wanted him to get better, but I imagine that spending a year with him, you must have grown very close to him.

HOWELL: Well he became another member of the family and so taking him back to his family, although that was always the initial plan and that was always my promise to his mother, that I would bring him back to her, it was really tough taking him back.  But we’re still maintaining our contact with the family and I hope someday down the road to be able to help Mohammed come back to the United States and maybe continue his education here.

WERMAN: I guess you miss him a lot.

HOWELL: I sure do.

WERMAN: Major Howell thank you very much.

HOWELL: Thank you.

WERMAN: Major David Howell spoke to us from Michigan.  He’ll be deploying to Afghanistan soon.  Michigan State University has been documenting Mohammed’s story.  If you want to see some scene’s from Mohammed’s year in the U.S. we’ve got a link to some videos at the world dot org.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

• BBC Iraq coverage
• The logistics of withdrawing from Iraq
• Ben Gilbert’s photos from FOB Q-West

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN:  I’m Marco Werman and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston.  The war in Iraq is not over and we as a nation will be dealing with it’s aftermath for a long time.  In a few minutes we’ll hear about the unpredictable costs of caring for injured veterans.  First though, there’s a sense that the conflict in Iraq is winding down.  The conflict is still officially dubbed Operation Iraqi Freedom.  Now in its eighth year, it’s known as Operation Iraqi Freedom Eight or OIF8.  The U.S. Army’s Third Infantry Division’s 164 Armor has been in Iraq from the very beginning.  It was the first unit to enter Baghdad in 2003.  Some of its members who were there then are back in Iraq now.  Reporter Ben Gilbert was embedded with the unit at a small combat outpost south of Mosul.  He spoke to some of the soldiers about how they feel about what could be their last deployment to Iraq.

DAVID SHUMATE:  My name is David Shumate.  I’m from Palm Bay, Florida.  And I’m 27 years old.  I’m from Alpha Company, 164 Armor.  This is my fourth tour in Iraq.  I’ve been in the invasion, OIF3, OIF5 and OIF8.  I was active Army right after September 11.  Then I deployed to Kuwait.  A few months after a lot of training we invaded Iraq.  So yeah, we lost two guys and had 18 wounded.  But I mean really, once we got into Baghdad, basically it was kind of over.  It was, once we got there it all stopped basically.  I was kind of amazing.  When I was on my first combat, a couple of my first patrols into Baghdad was amazing.  I was actually getting flowers from people.  Bouquets of flowers from women and they were happy and they were cheering that we were there.  A lot has changed from the first few weeks into Baghdad.  A couple weeks, couple months after that when the insurgency really started its affect on the people.

MIKE BAILEY:  My name is Mike Bailey.  I’m from Bell Chase, Louisiana.  I’m 27 years old.  This is my fourth time to Iraq.  The first time I was here with First Marine Division was down in Babel Province.  The second round I switched over and came as part of First Marine Regiment in February 2004.  We went to just outside of Fallujah in Anbar Province and the word of the day was IED’s.  They were everywhere.  People were more worried about what was going on on the side of the roads then what was going on on the roads.  That one definitely started off with a bang with the four Blackwater contractors that got killed two or three weeks after we got there.  Not too long after the Blackwater contractors were killed, we moved into the city of Fallujah with several battalions and started basically rooting out the guys that were coming out to fight us, and there was a lot of them.  A whole lot of them.  It seemed like everybody had an RPG or a gun in Fallujah back then.  You couldn’t get very far into the city before you started hearing booms and ricochets coming off vehicles and stuff like that.  They definitely wanted to fight us hear on.

JAMES AUSBENDER:  My name is Staff Sergeant James Ausbender.  I’m 32.  I live at Fort Stewart with my wife and kids, that’s home.  I was with the First Battalion, 18th Infantry, 1st ID.  We were based in Tikrete, just south of here.  We saw the end of all the major combat and the beginning of all the IED’s.  There was new armor on our vehicles so that made it very interesting times.

BAILEY:  This was back before armored Humvees right?

AUSBENDER:  Yeah.  So we had all the soft skin Humvees with all the Secretary of Defense trying to get us all the armor in a rush.  To their credit, nobody knew what the IED threat was until we hit it.

BAILEY:  Did you guys hillbilly armor your vehicles?

AUSBENDER:  Oh yeah, plywood, sheet metal, sandbags, everything you could think of we put on there.  Some of it worked.

SHUMATE:  I was 20 when we invaded, now I’m fixing to turn 28.  Big chunk of the twenties.  Wow, it’s from OIF3 to today is night and day.  The Iraqi Army is a lot more established.  We no longer really can go into the cities without Iraqi escorts.  We can’t go into an Iraqi house without an Iraqi escort and without a warrant or permission.  It’s night and day.  So basically OIF3 was, if we felt that house was suspicious or something was going bad in that house, we went in the house and we took care of business.  And so now, basically the Iraqis have control over everything and we’re just here to support them.

BAILEY:  You get the feeling that it’s the last deployment.  We were basically told you guys are going to turn the lights off on the way out the door.

GILBERT:  How much time have you spent in Iraq?

BAILEY:  Let’s see here, three years in my twenties have been spent in Iraq.  Parts of me is sick of coming here, being away from a toddler.  My daughter was just born, I actually missed her birth the last time I was here, and being away from my wife of eight years, but this is what I signed up to do when I was 18 years old and this is what I know.  My wife came into it and we know that its one of those things that’s going to happen and we’re prepared for it.

AUSBENDER:  I’m one of those guys I want to see it all the way through.  I’d rather stay here another year or two and get it done right then leave too early.  I was us to leave and for this to work out, not for us to leave and the country have issues.

WERMAN:  The voices of non-commissioned officers who have been in Iraq off and on since 2003 and 2004.  Reporter Ben Gilbert collected their stories while embedded with the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division, 164 Armor unit near Mosul.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

• Ben Gilbert’s photos from FOB Q-West
• Ben Gilbert on joint patrols in Iraq
• The struggle for Iraq

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN:  I’m Marco Werman and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston.  President Obama has pledged to remove U.S. combat troops from Iraq by August.  The withdrawal will be, among other things, a logistical nightmare.  Millions of dollars have gone into housing, dining halls, gyms, and swimming pools.  The military is already packing up and preparing to hand over what remains to the Iraqi military.  At the Contingency Operating Base, Q-West, near Mosul in northern Iraq, the last U.S. service members to leave will the Logistics Brigade.  Ben Gilbert reports.

BEN GILBERT:  There’s a hug gravel yard here at Contingency Operating Base Q-West that’s about the size of a football field.  On the perimeter of the yard are dozens of shipping containers.  In the middle sit white cardboard boxes, about a square yard wide and tall.  They contained the detritus of seven years of war.  Sergeant Damaris Van Zandt is a soldier with the Logistics Unit responsible for sorting through everything here.

SERGEANT DAMARIS VAN ZANDT:  We’re taking all excess stuff, we’re bringing them here to the yard and basically what happens in the yard is we separate it into five categories.

GILBERT: Those five categories pretty much break down into two big ones.  Stuff keep and use again and stuff to throw out.  In preparation for the transfer of this base to Iraq control, all the U.S. military units are cleaning out their storage rooms.  Everything they don’t need they drop off at this yard to be sifted through by the military logistics team.  Basically, Sgt. Van Zandt and his crew are dumpster diving.  A huge olive green forklift moves the white boxes, filled with just about anything imaginable.  There are phones and fax machines, tires, uniforms, antennas, ammo clips and orange traffic cones.  Sergeant Rob Strain is the public affairs officer for the U.S. Army’s 15th Sustainment Brigade.

SERGEANT ROB STRAIN:  This is like the precursor to transferring the base.  Getting everything that we have here so we know what we have and we get it out of here as much as possible before we actually transfer the base over.  Trying to get ahead of ourselves, basically.

GILBERT: The 15th Sustainment Brigade will oversee the handing over of this base in the fall.  Q-West is currently home to 8,000 troops.

LIEUTENANT COLONEL PAULA LODI:  Q-West is essentially a small city.

GILBERT: Lt. Col. Paula Lodi commands the unit responsible for turning off the lights at Q-West.  She’s currently trying to figure out what to do with the miles of concrete blast walls that snake nearly 10 miles around the base.  One thing she’s sure of is that the fire trucks and ambulances must stay until nearly the last day.  One of the biggest challenges is inventorying and transferring thousands of shipping containers that have been converted to sleeping quarters, called CHU’s which stands for containerized housing unit.

LT. COL. LODI:  Right now we are in the process of accounting for how many CHUs we have here and then sending that list up to U.S. Forces Iraq so that it can be sent to the Department of State, Department of Defense.  They all get to look at the list and see what’s available and determine if there is a need elsewhere.

GILBERT: Lt. Col. Lodi says the key to closing down the base is ensuring there is no interruption to the combat units that will have to operate out of here until the last day.  She says there is a basic blueprint for how to close down a base.  Q-West isn’t the first to close in Iraq, but she says each base does have its own challenges.

LT. COL. LODI:  We’re ending this mission with pride.  We’re not leaving in a hurry.  We’re not leaving in a state of chaos.  We’ve got a plan and we’re executing that plan.

GILBERT: And as bases like Q-West in Iraq are closed down, the bases in Afghanistan are being built up.  At this base in Kandahar a Navy construction battalion was building a new command center and barracks for an American unit’s expansion.  Ensign Richard Hendricks directed the construction.

ENSIGN RICHARD HENDRICKS:  We’ll build offices, living quarters, there will be everything.

GILBERT: So how long do you estimate that will take to build on this piece of land right here?

ENSIGN HENDRICKS:  Probably two months, yes sir.

GILBERT: You guys are working from sun up to sun down?

ENSIGN HENDRICKS:  Yes sir.  Ten, or about 11, 12 hours a day.

GILBERT: Many of the items being shipped out of Iraq will end up on bases like this.  Already air assets and vehicles have been sent to Afghanistan from Iraq to provide for the 30,000 U.S. surge troops arriving this spring.  For The World, I’m Ben Gilbert.

WERMAN: You can see some of Ben Gilbert’s photos of Q-West base at the world dot org.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

• Picture gallery
• Ben Gilbert’s election coverage from Kirkuk

• Ben Gilbert’s photos from Kirkuk
• Ben Gilbert’s election coverage
• BBC coverage

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN:  I’m Marco Werman, this is The World.  Results from yesterday’s Parliamentary elections in Iraq won’t be known for several days.  After all, about 6,000 candidates competed for more than 300 seats.  But the important thing is that the election seemed to have been free and fair.  The vote was a test of Iraq’s fragile democracy.  It’ll help determine whether the country can overcome its sectarian divides.  It will also help determine whether the U.S. can reduce its troop presence on schedule.  General Ray Odierno is the top American military commander in Iraq and he says he’s optimistic.

GENERAL RAY ODIERNO:  As I look out at today, we think we’re on track to be down to 50,000 and change our mission.  We obviously have contingencies in place and we’ll take a look at that, but there’s nothing today that tells us that we don’t think the Iraqi’s will be able to form this government in a peaceful way and begin to move forward so we are certainly believe that we will be able to go to 50,000 by the first of September.

WERMAN: General Ray Odierno speaking today in Baghdad.  In a moment we’ll consider what the Iraq elections mean for the Middle East and for Washington.  First though, we go to Ben Gilbert in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk.

BEN GILBERT:  An American military convoy drove United Nations and American Embassy officials to Kirkuk’s central counting center this morning.  But all they found were ballot boxes and just a few workers.  The center’s deputy, Firaz Jamal, said most of the top election officials weren’t there.

FIRAZ JAMAL:  We are waiting for them because all the night they were working, so actually they need some rest.

GILBERT: Machine gun fire may also have kept the poll workers up.  Celebratory gunfire erupted a few hours after the polls closed.  Tracers filled the air at the U.S. Air Force base on the outskirts of Kirkuk.  Personnel were told to take shelter due to the danger of falling lead.  But the party went on outside the base’s tall concrete walls.  Yesterday was noisy from the start.  In the morning music played from a car near a polling station as men in traditional Kurdish baggy pants, and women wearing green and yellow dresses walked to cast their votes in Kirkuk.  Among them was 70-year-old Latif Khooder.  This is a very good morning and we are really excited about it because we see the future of Iraq in this election he said.  Unlike the days of Saddam Hussein, several Iraqi’s took pride in not telling me how they voted, including 28-year-old Shlair Ibrahim.

INTERPRETER:  I don’t want to answer you.  I voted for whoever I wanted.

GILBERT: U.S. and international election observers say the vote pretty much went smoothly and was well organized.  They say that so far there have been no game-changing allegations of fraud.  Mark Hambley monitored the elections as part of a delegation from the Next Century Foundation.  Hambley says the vote was a positive step for Iraqis.

MARK HAMBLEY:  They’re masters of their own fate and that’s something they can be at least proud of despite some difficulties we had in the past.  The loss of life on both sides has been huge, but the potential here is greater and I think that these elections can turn into a government that’s a little more effective.  Move ahead on some of these difficulties and be better for everybody.

GILBERT: But Iraq is still not safe.  At least 30 people died in mortar and grenade attacks in Baghdad yesterday despite the tight security.  But all of Iraq’s major religious groups did take part in this election for the first time.  That includes Sunni Arabs.  Many Sunni’s boycotted the vote in 2005.  President Barack Obama said he has great respect for the millions of Iraqis who refused to be deterred by acts of violence and who exercised their right to vote.  Mr. Obama has set a September deadline for all combat troops to be out of Iraq.  Whether more troops can be withdrawn after that will depend on the formation of Iraq’s next government.  That could take a while.  No single party is expected to win a majority in Parliament and negotiations among the parties are likely to be contentious.  For The World, I’m Ben Gilbert in Kirkuk, Northern Iraq.

WERMAN: You can see Ben Gilbert’s photos of the vote in Kirkuk at the world dot org.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Violence as the voting begins

At least 14 people were killed in Baghdad on the first day of voting. The day before, three suicide bombers attacked police and a hospital in Baquba, killing at least 30 people. Reporter Ben Gilbert accompanied an American embasssy election observer team in Kirkuk. (aired March 4)

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The role of Kirkuk

Nearly 1.5 million Iraqis living began casting their votes on March 5, while, people inside Iraq voted on March 7. The northern city of Kirkuk is ground zero for a potential conflict following the planned US withdrawal: the struggle between Arabs and Kurds over a large part of the country’s north. In his second story, reporter Ben Gilbert looks at the role Kirkuk plays in the vote. (aired March 5)

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• Ben Gilbert’s photos from Kirkuk
• BBC coverage

Counting underway

The voter turnout in Iraq’s general elections was 62%, officials say, despite attacks that killed 38 people. Preliminary results are not expected for several more days but the turnout figure is down from the 75% who voted in the 2005 general elections. Prime Minister Nouri Maliki’s State of Law Coalition is widely expected to win the most seats. (aired March 8)

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• Ben Gilbert’s first report from Kirkuk
• Iraqi voters discuss election
• The struggle for Iraq

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN:  I’m Marco Werman, this is The World.  Iraq holds a key Parliamentary vote on Sunday.  The outcome will determine who controls the government in Baghdad as U.S. troops continue to prepare for withdrawal.  Militants have tried to derail the run up to the vote with several deadly attacks and there could be more violence this weekend.  But today, voting began for Iraqis living outside the country.  Turnout was reported to be high among the many Sunni Iraqis now in Syria and Jordan.  Sunni Arabs enjoyed a privileged status under Saddam Hussein.  Other groups resented that.  Since the war Shiites and Kurds have dominated at the ballot box and the Sunnis resent that.  The northern city of Kirkuk sits right on the fault line that divides Iraq’s many religious and ethnic groups.  Ben Gilbert reports on what Sunday’s vote looks like from there.

BEN GILBERT:  The ethnically mixed and volatile city of Kirkuk is divided between Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen with a sprinkling of Christians.  In the past violence has flared between Kurds and Turkmen or Arabs, but now there’s an added element; a new Kurdish political party called Goran, or change.  Campaign anthems blare from loudspeakers on Kirkuk streets.  Campaign posters have plastered the walls here since about a second after campaigning officially began last month.  The new party, Change, is up against two large traditional Kurdish parties, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, or PUK, and the Kurdish Democratic Party, or KDP.  Those two fought violent civil wars against each other in the 1980′s and 90′s.  Jalal Jawri was once a fighter for the PUK.  Now he’s the head of the Change party in Kirkuk.  He says the new party will do away with the corrupt, rigid ways of the old parties.

INTERPRETER:  Those groups, especially the PUK, they have a mentality, a way of thinking that doesn’t allow the others to be in the political process with them.  They only want to control everything by themselves.  So that’s why they’re tearing down our posters, intimidating people and telling them to stop trying to be in politics.

GILBERT: Raffat Hamarash, the PUK leader in Kirkuk, and Jowri’s cousin, denies targeting the Change party supporters or political advertising.  He says his party has been the victim of intimidation and vandalism coming from the Change party’s ranks.  But despite the tensions, he says Kurds will not fight against each other again.  There will be no bloodshed between the Kurds, Hamarash said.  The Kurd had a very hard time in the past.  The whole leadership has decided not to repeat this experience because what happened in the past is considered shameful and it will not happen again.  But even if Kurds back away from violence, tensions are high here.  Last week tempers flared when a Turkman politician narrowly escaped assassination in downtown Kirkuk.  Arshaat Asalahee, head of the Iraqi Turkmen Front in Kirkuk says the Kurd were to blame.

ARSHAAT ASALAHEE:  They wanted to strike down the powerful voice of the Turkmen, especially the Turkmen Front.  One was the assassination program and then they attacked the Turkmen Front headquarters but we were wise and dealt with the situation in a wise way to contain the problem.

GILBERT: But the fix may be only temporary.  Kurds claim Northern Iraq and Kirkuk as their ancestral homeland.  They were kicked out of the oil rich region by Saddam Hussein in an effort to Arabize the city.  The Kurds have returned but the status of Kirkuk is still undecided.  The Iraqi Constitution requires that a referendum be held to determine Kirkuk’s status, but it keeps getting put off.  The Turkmen politician Arshaat Asalahee says an eventual vote could cause civil war.

ASALAHEE:  This could lead us into a hurricane and the Americans are giving the impression that they are backing the Kurds up in their quest to have Kirkuk included in Kurdistan.

GILBERT: Asalahee, wants a transitional shared government responsible for Kirkuk until demographic and property issues can be determined.  Rafaat Hamarash, the PUK leader in Kirkuk says he still envisions a day when Kirkuk is part of a state called Kurdistan, but realizes it’s not possible now.

INTERPRETER:  We believe that the current circumstances in Iraq allow for returning Kirkuk to the Kurdistan regional government and creating an independent state.  But let’s think about that.  If we’re going to do that, then we see Kurdistan bordered by Iran, Turkey and Syria.  Doing this would be suicide.

GILBERT: For now, U.S. troops are acting as peacemakers in the Kurd on Kurd and Kurd versus Arab, or Turkmen disputes.  They patrol the streets with Iraqi police and Iraqi soldiers.  Colonel Larry Swift with the First Brigade of the First Armored Division says things are looking good for Sunday’s elections.

COLONEL LARRY SWIFT:  There’s a very competent Police Force and a very competent Army doing great things every day to keep it that way and right now we’re really an enabler for them.

GILBERT: But that could change quickly depending on the election results.  It’s widely believed that U.S. combat troops will stay in Kirkuk and the surrounding areas longer than any others in Iraq; possibly well beyond the September deadline President Obama has outlined.  For The World, I’m Ben Gilbert in Kirkuk, Northern Iraq.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

• Ben Gilbert’s photos from Kirkuk
• BBC coverage
• On The World: Suicide attacks in Iraq ahead of vote (Wed)

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN:  I’m Marco Werman; this is The World.  Early voting started today for Iraq’s parliamentary elections.  Most Iraqis go to the polls Sunday.  Today was a chance for those who work on Sunday, mostly police and the military, to cast their ballots.  Unfortunately, the start of voting was met by violence.

WERMAN: At least 17 people died after suicide bombers targeted polling stations in Baghdad today.  Violence was widely expected before these elections.  Now there’s concern that the attacks will keep voter turnout low on Sunday.  Ben Gilbert is embedded with the U.S. Embassy Election Observer Team in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, and has this report.

BEN GILBERT: Although violent attacks occurred in Baqubah yesterday and Baghdad today, the voting in the multi-ethnic city of Kirkuk was peaceful, if not always quiet.

GILBERT: That’s a patriotic army song blasting from an ambulance near a voting station in Kirkuk.  Some thousand soldiers lined up to vote here this afternoon.  One of them, 28-year-old First Sergeant Mookdad Salah Alawi says he thought things were going smoothly.

INTERPRETER: The best we can hope for is that the people are safe, and that whoever wins the election deserves to win.

GILBERT: Another voter, Shamal Khader, an employee in a maintenance office on an army base, said the elections were successful and clean.

INTERPRETER: Everything was good, and no one asked me to vote for a list.  I was free to vote for the candidates I wanted.

GILBERT: The voting process did appear smooth and orderly at three polling stations.  The Voting Manager at this spot said some of the soldiers’ names were missing from the voting list, but the problem was being resolved.  Similar problems were reported in other voting stations in the country.  But generally the voting appeared to go off without a hitch.  Up to 800,000 people registered for what’s called ‘special needs voting’ for the infirm, prisoners, police and soldiers.  Overall voter registration is near 18 million, up from 13 million in 2005.  This Sunday’s election results and formation of a new government will be a major indicator for how well Iraq’s competing parties will get along.  Iraqi foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari made clear that the elections will likely be a major factor in determining the speed of President Obama’s planned withdrawal of remaining American combat troops from Iraq that’s slated for September 1^st.

HOSHYAR ZEBARI: If we succeed, yes, that will be the end of the American presence.  If there are setbacks, if there is a deterioration in the security, if there would be people who would challenge the outcome, who would resist, who would resort to violence – no, it would be another story.

GILBERT: Despite the calm, it’s still dangerous here.  And the U.S. military and State Department still operate with extreme caution.

[SOUNDS OF GUNFIRE]

GILBERT: U.S. soldiers test fired their guns today as they left an American base in Kirkuk.  The Army uses heavily armored vehicles to escort U.S. Embassy Observer Teams to polling stations. U.N. and American election observers wore helmets and body armor inside the polling stations.  Compared to Baghdad, Kirkuk has always been relatively safe, but it is also an area where both Al Qaeda affiliated insurgents and tensions between political parties, ethnicities and religions could result in violence.  American officials warned that as the rest of Iraq has calmed, the tensions in the north between Kurds and Arabs remain the most volatile.  They fear disagreements over the status of Kirkuk, which sits atop huge oil reserves, could lead to renewed fighting.  For The World, I’m Ben Gilbert in Kirkuk, northern Iraq.

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• BBC coverage
• The struggle for Iraq

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MARCO WERMAN:  I’m Marco Werman and this is The World.  U.S. and Iraqi officials have been warning of insurgent attacks as Parliamentary elections draw closer.  Those warnings were vindicated today.  Suicide bombers killed more than 30 people in the city of Baquba.  The timing is worrisome.  The elections are scheduled for Sunday.  The balloting will decide who will govern Iraq as U.S. forces withdraw.  The vote will also help determine whether Iraq can overcome the sectarian tensions that continue to divide the nation.  This is a campaign song for one of the candidates.  The first singer asks will you vote?  The response is yes I will vote and I will defy terrorism despite the swords that have fought me.  Yes, some Iraqi’s are enthusiastic about the upcoming election, but reporter Sahar Issa with McClatchy Newspapers in Baghdad says other Iraqis are skeptical.

SAHAR ISSA:  They find it very funny, actually.  They laugh that there are elections and that they would go to elect, to repeat what they believe has been a very unproductive four years.

WERMAN: So you’re saying people are kind of chuckling about this.  Are they making jokes about this election?

issa: You can’t imagine the jokes.

WERMAN: Tell me one.

ISSA: Like, for instance, the posters that are being posted.  There are very many secular women on the slate this election and many of them are very beautiful.  They have make up on and tinted hair and others that are in the traditional cover, the hijab.  And I spoke to one gentleman who said if winning the elections depends upon how long people stare at posters, I am sure this young lady will win.  And she was, certainly, very beautiful.

WERMAN: Do you think the humor is healthy or is it a sign of cynicism?

ISSA: It is a good thing when it is lighthearted, but at the base of it, yes there is cynicism.  People have simply lost their belief.  They are disenchanted.  The feel that they have gone through one period and after electing and being enthusiastic about the people they are electing and what happen, they are so let down.  And so yes, there is cynicism behind it.

WERMAN: Hundreds of candidates were banned just before the elections because of their links to the Bathists.  How do you feel about all those alleged Bathists being told you can’t run?

ISSA: To be fair, a lot of the candidates whose names were banned were people who are newcomers to the political scene.  And therefore they were investigated and according to the constitution and to the accountability and justice law, they were banned.  But, not all of them were new.  There are faces who have been on the Iraqi political scene for years and they are well know, they are liked by some, they are hated by others.  Nevertheless, they have been there.  They have made names for themselves and they have a following.  And these people suddenly, after so many years, to be thrown out at the time when their followers will be left adrift, this is the thing that points to, how do you say, unclean intentions on the part of the people who banned them weeks before the elections.  It’s unbelievable.

WERMAN: You know, in a country where democracy is trying to flourish, we’ve heard a lot about the ways candidates are attempting to appeal to voters.  Handing out goods and things, everything from sneakers to gold watches to chicken dinners.  Have you seen a lot of evidence of this stuff?

ISSA: And blankets and rice and cooking oil to the degree Marco that the spokesman for the Iraqi government comes out with a statement on their website that warns against this.  He says the Merjariya, which is the highest religious authority for the Shiite have banned this practice.  So be careful lest you be one of the people who go for eternal hell because you are doing something that is prohibited.

WERMAN: Is this kind of a season of door prizes in the lead up to the election or do Iraqis, if they receive these gifts, feel an obligation to vote for the candidate that gave the that thing.

ISSA: I will tell you what happened in the last elections.  The Iraqi people took the presents and voted for someone else.

WERMAN: They voted for who they wanted to vote for.

ISSA: Yes, in the first place.  This is what happened.  And this time they are laughing at it, those of the people who are being offered these prizes.  If they need them, they will take them.  If they don’t need them, they will not take them.  But I doubt if it will sway their vote one way or the other.

WERMAN: What does democracy then mean in Baghdad today?  If you were to walk up to the average person on the street and say there are 100,000 troops here in Iraq, but what in your mind does democracy mean?

ISSA: Marco, democracy is a new concept for Iraqis.  We are the culture and the society that has the father figure.  The father figure in the family, the father figure in the tribe, even the father figure in the state and people are quite happy, unfortunately, because this is the way the society is built, the tribal society.  They are quite happy to do what their elders tell them to do.  Now you throw at them a concept that is totally alien and foreign to them.  What is democracy for the Iraqis?  They don’t believe in democracy inside their families.  They don’t know what democracy truly means.  It is not part of their culture.  I think because democracy is a context that should be built from the base upwards, it will take quite a while for Iraqis to really understand and this is Iraqis on the streets, I’m not speaking about college professors, I’m not speaking about politicians or doctors or engineers, I’m speaking about the man on the street, the farmer, the mechanic, the man who works at the petrol station, the man who makes sandwiches in the vendor.  They don’t know really what democracy is.  They are happy to be able to speak out loud now.  They are happy to have the freedom of speech that for a long time they didn’t have.

WERMAN: Are they happy to go to the polls this weekend and vote?

ISSA: They are happy to be able to.  Yes.  Yes they are happy to be able to.  Yes I believe so.

WERMAN: Sahar it’s clear despite the three bombings in Baquba today that violence in Iraq has dissipated, but tell us to what extent the people are still fearful.

ISSA: The people are tentative.  Although, how do you say, the barriers have come down somewhat.  People are going out; life in Baghdad has come back.  But people, how do you say, if a tire blows, you see faces go pale.  If a balloon blows, faces go pale.  If something breaks, some glass or like a plate or something, people instantly almost have a heart attack.  It will take time Marco.  It will take time to erase.  It’s difficult to erase, but at least to lessen the effects of the violence that Iraq has gone through.

WERMAN: Sahar Issa with McClatchy Newspapers in Baghdad, very good to speak with you again.  Thank you.

ISSA: Thank you.

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• BBC coverage
• The struggle for Iraq
• Profile of Chemical Ali

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MARCO WERMAN:  Baghdad had been relatively quiet in the past six weeks.  Then today, a series of car bombs shattered any sense of calm that residents of the Iraqi capital may have been feeling.  The first explosion happened near the Sheraton Hotel.  Two further blasts followed shortly afterwards near the Green Zone.  At least 36 people were killed and more than 70 people were wounded.  The attacks came as Iraq is preparing for General Elections in March.  The BBC’s Jim Muir is in Baghdad.  Jim, what happened today?

JIM MUIR:  Well this was obviously a coordinated triple suicide car bomb attack, or campaign almost, you would call it.  The first went off near the Sheraton Hotel which is close to where we are.  We had our building shaken, some windows blown out and dust thrown around and so on.  That was a suicide car bomb just by the Sheraton.  We believe 11 people were killed in that blast.  Then a short while afterwards another similar car bomb explosion near the Babylon Hotel which is a mile or two away.  And then another one at the Hamara Hotel which is where a lot of western journalists are based.  Heavy damage there, both to the hotel and adjacent buildings were a lot of journalists are stationed.

WERMAN: And how unusual is a well coordinated, three well coordinated strikes?

MUIR: Well they do seem to come in clusters.  That’s maybe why they take so much planning, because of the logistics involved.  The ones in August, October and December, involved double suicide truck bombings, almost simultaneously, but striking at Ministries and getting through the security to get at Ministries obviously took a lot of planning too.   So yes, there’s a lot of planning goes into these and obviously there are people out there who still have the logistics and the planning and the capability to carry out these attacks.  The government is accusing both remnants of Saddam Hussein’s Bathist Regime and Islamic Radicals are kind of getting together in a cooperative venture for these attacks.

WERMAN: Now, Iraqi’s go to the polls in March to vote for a new Parliament.  Iraqi’s are taking the lead role now on security this time around as opposed to international forces.  But I guess these bombings make one wonder if the country is secure enough.  Do you think the violence could actually derail March elections?

MUIR: I doubt very much if it would because the elections are nation-wide and the violence, as I say, is happening in this kind of concentrated way every two months.  I don’t think they have a big enough capability, the insurgents, to mount a kind of huge multiple campaign of a sustained nature that could actually derail the elections.  Certainly there will be more attempt as the day approaches.  There’s no question about that.

WERMAN: Jim, also today, one of Saddam Hussein’s most notorious henchmen, Ali Hassan Almajid, better knows as Chemical Ali, was executed.  Remind us briefly who he was and how Iraqi’s reacted to reminders of the Saddam era today and news like this of Chemical Ali’s execution.

MUIR: Well Chemical Ali, Ali Hassan Almajid, was the cousin of Saddam Hussein and he was the man that Saddam chose to spearhead his brutal campaigns of repression, both against the Kerds in the North and the Shiites in the South.  He lead what’s called the Anfal campaign against the Kerds in 1988, in which an estimated 180,000 Kerds died in what human rights watch and now they have called a genocide.  He got his first death sentence for that.  There were all together four death sentences.  The second and third were for crimes against the Shiites in the South, repressing their uprising there in 1991.  And again, another rebellion from the Shiites in 1999.  Then finally, of course, just eight days ago he received that fourth death sentence for Halabja, the town where he ordered his forces, the Air Force, to drop chemical bombs on the Kerds there killing something like 5,000 of them.  That, for the Kerds, was the big symbolic event which stood out as the kind of symbol of everything that was evil about the Saddam Hussein regime and the traumas it inflicted on them.  So they wanted to see him hang for that and that is exactly what’s happened.

WERMAN: The BBC’s Jim Muir in Baghdad.  Greatly appreciate your time Jim.

MUIR: Most welcome Marco.

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• ‘The Poet of Baghdad’ – BBC video about Nabeel Yasin’s life
• BBC: the struggle for Iraq

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JEB SHARP: By the time the US invaded Iraq the so-called poet of Baghdad had been in exile for more than 20 years. Nabeel Yasin had upset Saddam Hussein’s regime so much that the words enemy of the state were stamped in his passport. He fled Iraq in 1980. He recently returned with political ambitions. Yasin is running for prime minister in the March elections. Today in Baghdad Yasin recalled how he first fell out of favor with Saddam Hussein’s regime.

NABEEL YASIN: The problem start in early ‘70s when I read my poem, The Poet Satirizes King. So they thought that the poem satirized Saddam Hussein himself.

SHARP: Was it your intent to satirize Saddam Hussein?

YASIN: My poetry satirized the dictatorship in Iraq and everywhere.

SHARP: And where did you go when you left Iraq 30 years ago?

YASIN: Actually it wasn’t easy for my son Yamam and for my wife Nada. My son was three years and it was awful for us to stay for example in Syria, two weeks in Lebanon, three months in France, three weeks … . So our home was luggage and after two years I was able to stay for a couple of years in Hungary.

SHARP: You are very popular as a poet in Iraq and people read your poetry and smuggled your poetry back in even when you were far away. I wonder if that translates now. You know is this a serious run for political office or are you making a point?

YASIN: I’m working in the political field as an amateur but I’m a professional poet. So I try to mix between my dream and my realistic idea.

SHARP: How different is it to be a poet among the people compared to being a politician among the people?

YASIN: To be a poet I think it’s very, very good to be very close to the people. The politics unfortunately is different than the poetry. Many, many politicians they don’t like to meet people. Just to get their votes. So this is the problem in Iraq now.

SHARP: So why really are you trying to be prime minister? Why run for office if you what you really want to do is be a poet?

YASIN: Iraq needs to be again part of the international society. Iraq now belongs to 200 years ago. Even the Iraqis watching the television, using the internet, but [INDISCERNIBLE] the situation still belongs to 200 years ago. So I think if I’m just one citizen in Iraq I couldn’t do anything. But if we have position as educated people so we can help the people to realize the real democracy in Iraq, I mean real democracy, which gives the people the hope and take care for their demands.

SHARP: You’ve been back in the country a little while now. Did you recognize it when you returned? Was it strange to you or still familiar?

YASIN: I went with friend from the house to get something from a small shop. I told my friend … . I said listen I’m walking in the same street which I walked 30 years ago but I have not the same feeling. I’m still feeling I’m stranger. And everything around me still strange.

SHARP: Do you remember it as a better place 30 years ago?

YASIN: Exactly, exactly. For me it was a paradise. Everything was normal. In my, inside my feeling, even they chasing me from the secret police even the situation was very dangerous, even I faced death several times, but inside me the situation was normal. But now I lost Baghdad twice. One when I left it and another one when I came back to live in Baghdad.

SHARP: Nabeel Yasin have you been writing poetry since you returned to Iraq and do you have something you could recite for us?

YASIN: If you like I can read something from Mesopotamia poem.

SHARP: Yes please.

YASIN: This poem is speaking about women in Iraq.

[READING POEM IN ARABIC]

SHARP: It’s so beautiful in Arabic and I don’t speak Arabic but I’d love to hear a little bit more about what you were saying.

YASIN: I’m saying does this woman who will take care for the flowers maybe she will waiting for somebody bringing something from Damascus or from Shiraz or some water from Mecca but in the end she was alone. She still remember how many people she had lost and say my God is there anyone to lose?

SHARP: Nabeel Yasin is one of Iraq’s most beloved poets and a candidate for prime minister. Thanks again.

YASIN: Thank you very much.

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John Chilcot

The man in charge of the official British inquiry examining events surrounding the Iraq war has said his committee will not produce a report that is a “whitewash.” John Chilcot, a retired career civil servant, has promised to produce a “full and insightful” account. Evidence from senior government figures will start on Tuesday and politicians, including former Prime Minister Tony Blair will be expected to testify in due time. Laura Lynch reports.

• BBC coverage
• FAQ British Iraq inquiry

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MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman. This is The World. Britain is revisiting one of the most divisive issues in its recent history. An independent panel will begin public hearings tomorrow into the country’s role in the war in Iraq. It’s the third time a government appointed panel has investigated circumstances surrounding the war and supporters say this inquiry will be the definitive one. But as The World’s Laura Lynch reports others are already saying these hearings won’t do much to shed light on Britain’s decision to go to war.

LAURA LYNCH: From the day Sir John Chilcot took on the role as chair of the Iraq inquiry he’s heard the accusation – it will be nothing more than a whitewash.

SIR JOHN CHILCOT: It won’t be but the judgment is to whether people think it is and will lie on how it’s read when it comes out.

LYNCH: Britain’s decision to go to war in Iraq was and still is controversial. Then prime minister, Tony Blair, pushed ahead with the plan to send 45,000 troops despite widespread opposition and some claims that the war was illegal.

TONY BLAIR: This is not the time to falter. This is the time for this house – not just this government or indeed this prime minister – but for this house to give a lead. To show that we will stand up for what we know to be right. To show that we will confront the tyrannies and dictatorships and terrorists who put our way of life at risk.

LYNCH: Blair himself is expected to testify at the inquiry early next year. Other senior politicians, bureaucrats, military leaders, and intelligence officers will also be on the witness list. Sir John Chilcot insists the five-person panel, all appointed by the government, is ready to take on anyone including members of the government itself.

CHILCOT: What you can’t do is make up a committee like this of people who have no experience of the workings of government from the inside. There is one other point worth making. When you set up an independent inquiry of this sort you set the members of it free to do what they will and our determination is to do not merely a thorough job but one that is frank and will bear public scrutiny.

LYNCH: Already though his inquiry is facing criticism. Carne Ross is a former British diplomat and an expert on Iraq who resigned after testifying at a previous inquiry. Ross reels off a list of problems with the current inquiry starting with the names on the witness lists.

CARNE ROSS: They’re all the most senior people. These people were deeply implicated in having carried out the execution of the war. Why would they reveal an account at odds with the government’s own narrative of what has happened. How will the panel get to that deeper truth of what took place here? What is the mechanism of accountability if dishonesty is uncovered or even God forbid illegality by certain members of the government?

LYNCH: That’s also a concern for many of those who lost relatives in the Iraq war. Elsie Manning’s daughter staff sergeant Sharon Elliott died in a bomb attack in 2006.

ELSIE MANNING: You know it’s alright having these inquiries and for someone to sit at the other side of a desk and listen and write everything down but where does that leave us? Where does that leave the families? Where does it leave the soldiers who are serving now?

LYNCH: Manning and others want Tony Blair and his cabinet to answer for their decision to send British soldiers they believe was illegal. But they also worry that even if this inquiry confirms their belief it can only say that without punishing anyone for what happened in the past. For The World I’m Laura Lynch in London.

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• BBC coverage
• Back to the bad old days for Iraq?

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JEB SHARP:  I’m Jeb Sharp and this is The World.  Iraq’s leaders are calling on the country’s neighbors to do more to keep insurgents from crossing into Iraq.  That follows a pair of suicide bombings against government buildings in Baghdad yesterday that killed more than 150 people.  It was the worst attack in Iraq in more than two years.  Iraqi officials are blaming foreign fighters, but the attacks are fueling fears about Iraq’s ability to protect itself as it gears up for elections and the withdrawal of US troops.  The World’s Jason Margolis reports.

JASON MARGOLIS:  Pick up just about any paper today and the situation in Iraq once again looks grim.  Images of people weeping, charred vehicles and blown out windows in downtown Baghdad.  It’s a horrific scene, but the overall situation in Iraq may not be as bleak as today’s pictures suggest.  Former Assistant Secretary of Defense Lawrence Korb just returned from a two week trip to Iraq.  Korb says despite yesterday’s attacks, overall violence is down there.  He says, In part, that’s because American forces aren’t around as a target.

LAWRENCE KORB:  The key thing that I found out was that the Iraqis now know we’re leaving.  There was always a certain amount of them that didn’t think we would leave, and thought, “Well, if we kill enough of them, then they’ll go.”  But when we took those troops out of the cities on 30 June, it’s a big difference. You don’t see any US troops around at all in the cities.

MARGOLIS:  Yesterday’s attacks were also noteworthy for the targets: two government buildings in the heart of Baghdad.  Lawrence Korb says the bombers chose government buildings in part because they could reach them.  Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki recently ordered the removal of some protective blast walls in Baghdad.

KORB:   I think Maliki, the prime minister, sort of overreacted after the US left.  We told him they’d take down a lot of the checkpoints and the walls.  I think that was a mistake.  Once you do that, then you’re, you know, giving people more opportunities.

MARGOLIS:  It’s not certain who orchestrated yesterday’s suicide attacks, but many people who follow Iraq suggest the bombings were likely a message intended for Maliki, who is running for re-election in January.

THOMAS RICKS:  I think the message that the bombers were trying to convey, no matter who they were, was that Maliki does not control Iraq as much as he claims he does.

MARGOLIS:  That’s Thomas Ricks, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security.

RICKS:  And the message to Iraqis was, he can’t even protect ministries in the heart of Baghdad.

MARGOLIS:  Ricks has written two books about the Iraq war.  He’s a pessimist about the situation there.  He argues that yesterday’s bombings also sent a message to American leaders, that American troops just can’t pack up in two years and expect a happy outcome.  US forces are scheduled to fully withdraw from Iraq by the end of 2011.

RICKS:  The cost of leaving could well be a civil war.  Could even be a regional war.

MARGOLIS:  But others caution against inferring too much from yesterday’s suicide bombings.  Rick Nelson is at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

RICK NELSON:  Things in Iraq are relatively stable to where they were, you know, one, two, three, especially four or five years ago.  We shouldn’t expect that there won’t be any additional

attacks.  And while these attacks are significant, it doesn’t mean that Iraq is not on a road to stability.

MARGOLIS:  Nelson says yesterday’s attacks shouldn’t create a panic among American decision makers, nor does Nelson say the attacks prove that the Iraqi government can’t provide security for its citizens.

NELSON:  We have to give the Iraqis a chance to do this and to see how they respond to these attacks, to gauge their resilience, and most importantly, to see if they can do the elections on January 16^th.

MARGOLIS:  Since US troops pulled back from Iraqi urban areas in June, there have been five significant bombings throughout the country.  But those kinds of attacks are getting less coverage, now that Afghanistan and Pakistan are dominating headlines.  Thomas Ricks says Iraq has become the forgotten war.

RICKS:  Partly because Americans want to forget it.  I think there’s a growing recognition that this was a terrible mistake, in my view the biggest mistake in the history of American foreign policy, and that little good is going to come of it.

MARGOLIS:  But Rick Nelson sees Iraq’s fade from front pages as a good sign.

NELSON:  It shows that the progress is moving forward, that there’s not a lot of news being made in Iraq, which means a lot of bad things aren’t happening.

MARGOLIS:  Though Nelson concedes yesterday’s attacks were a setback. For The World, I’m Jason Margolis.

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>>> click here for the latest updates from the BBC

View pictures from Iraq

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LISA MULLINS: Tom Ricks is the author of The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006 to 2008.  He is now in Washington, DC.  Tom, Sahar Issa believes that if the mainly Shiite security forces, working for a mainly Shiite government in Iraq can protect the safety of the average Sunni, than that’s gonna show that Iraq is indeed able to successfully govern after an American withdrawal. For you, what is the sign of Iraq’s stability as of today? What are you looking for?

TOM RICKS: I think that indeed would be a major sign. A second sign related would be the overall behavior of Iraqi security forces, how well they treat the population when there aren’t American soldiers around watching them. And finally, and most broadly, it would be the level of violence against Iraqi civilians, no matter what direction it’s coming from, whether it’s from Belize’s Al Qaeda insurgents, or Iraqi security forces.

LISA MULLINS: And is that going to tell you how able the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is to govern? Or is that telling you something else about the preparedness of the security forces?

TOM RICKS: Preparedness has never been the problem for the security forces, they’ve always been well equipped, they’ve had gradually better training. The problem has always been motivation. What is gonna be motivating these guys? And I worry sometimes when I see all of these Iraqis celebrating. It looks to us like, oh, they’re celebrating in Iraq that is now beyond occupation. I worry that in fact what they’re doing is celebrating, hey, we won, my team won, and my part of Iraq now dominates the rest of the country. If that’s so, then what you may be seeing is simply prelude to another round of Civil War.

LISA MULLINS: How bad, though, do things have to get? I mean, if you’re worried about things devolving into Civil War, how bad do things have to get before American troops are brought back on the scene, since they’re waiting on the sidelines now?

TOM RICKS: I’m not sure they really will be brought back on the scene. I think Americans are really sick of Iraq, they wanna get out. They feel like they’ve given Iraq a chance to move forward, and it’s up to them to take it.

LISA MULLINS: But isn’t that why they’re still there?

TOM RICKS: Yes, right now Americans are still there to try to keep the lid on the violence, and also to try to protect the Iraqi government as it grows. The question though is, if things do fall apart slowly, which is to say over the rest of this year and into next year. By the end of next year it’ll be too late to really have American forces intervene, they’ll be gone.

LISA MULLINS: I don’t know if you would have a different answer for this next year, we’ll try you out and see. But as of now, how would you say the United States has transformed Iraq? And how has Iraq, and the US involvement in it transformed the US?

TOM RICKS: Iraq has changed the US. And actually, you took me back when you asked that question. I remember somebody saying to me years ago, you think the Americans are gonna change Iraq, what the Americans are gonna find out is how much the Iraq war changes them. We have been changed as a country. We are now involved fighting on the ground in the Middle East, and I think we’re stuck on the ground in the Middle East for many, many years to come. This is by no means the end of the American War in Iraq. It is by no means the end of Americans fighting in Iraq. We’re gonna see, I expect a pretty long hot and bloody summer there. And it worries me because I think Afghanistan also is gonna have a long hot summer. That’s why I think Americans are gonna be surprised by how much war news they have to consume over the next three months.

LISA MULLINS: Tom Ricks’ books include Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq 2003 to 2006. Thank you very much Tom.

TOM RICKS: You’re welcome.

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