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Omar Salem Shehab tells of torture at hands of notorious Iraqi police unit and says US forces were involved in his capture

During the foreboding months of 2005, one police unit struck more fear into Iraqis than the entire occupying US army. They were known as the Wolf Brigade.

Brutal even by Iraqi standards, their soldiers and officers seemingly answered to no one. They were seen as indiscriminate and predatory. The unit’s reputation had been known Iraq-wide and results of their numerous raids are still bogged down in Iraq’s legal system.

But the full range of their abuses and close co-operation with the US army remained in the shadows until the WikiLeaks disclosures showcased them in stark detail.

A visit from the unit to any neighbourhood was sure to bring trouble – as it it did for Omar Salem Shehab on 25 June that year.

"We were at home that night," Shehab recalled this week. "We were three brothers sleeping above my ice-cream shop. We were woken by soldiers entering our house by force. They came with Americans. They said we were wanted and produced a document. The Americans took our pictures, then the soldiers we now knew were the Wolf Brigade took us to the Seventh Division camp [of the Iraqi army]."

Shehab and his brothers lived in Dora, in Baghdad’s south, a lethal enclave of the city that was rapidly deteriorating into chaos. Like most of Dora’s residents, they are Sunni Muslims.

The trio were at the army camp for a day, then transferred to Baghdad’s main prison, known as Tsferrat.

"We were tortured all the time, he said. "We were never investigated, just tortured. The commander of the Wolf Brigade, Abu al-Walid was one of the torturers. My brother had a kidney problem and they continued to torture him without giving him medicine.

"He died after a month and the doctor wrote ‘kidney failure’ as a cause of death, despite his body being covered with torture marks. When he died, they let me and my other brother out. I later learned that another man we had met in prison, Khalid Hussein, had also died."

Torture and death seemed synonymous with the almost exclusively Shia unit, which was tasked with rooting out Sunni insurgents from post-Saddam Iraq. As security unravelled across the country, they were often seen alongside US forces, particularly in Baghdad and Mosul.

Earlier in 2005, they had swept into Mosul with the US army in support. Muataz Salah Ahmed, now 40, was working in the al-Mas hotel that January when the men in the distinctive red berets and balaclavas burst through the doors.

"They arrested us all," he said. "There was an Iranian officer, his name was Ali. Many other officers with him were proud to tell us that they were not police, but Wolf Brigade. They said they had come from Baghdad to arrest us because we supported Saddam and deserved to be executed.

"One officer threatened to rape my wife. He tore at her dress and four of my colleagues were killed in front of my eyes. They drilled holes in my legs and arms and did all manner of things to me. They took me and around 1,500 other prisoners to a basement inside the police commander’s headquarters."

The unit stayed in Mosul for five months. Ahmed remained in prison for eight months, before being released by a court without conviction.

"I have many documents proving who they were and what they did to me," he said. "Twelve families have complained against the general in charge of the unit; his name was Khalid. But they were the government, so what can be done about them?"

The Wolf Brigade unit was formed in late 2004, drawing many recruits from the impoverished Shia slums of Sadr city. By late 2005, it was around 2,000-strong and roaming the country with impunity. The unit notionally answered to the then interior minister, Ibrahim al-Jafari, who became prime minister in April 2005 for 12 months as sectarian carnage spiralled out of control.

When Nouri al-Maliki replaced Jafari as prime minister, he pledged to crack down on the Wolf Brigade and any other units seen to be carrying out sectarian agendas. By then, most of its leaders had fled or been killed.

Questions have endured in the ensuing five years about the extent of US co-operation with the unit and whether US forces knew of the scale of their abuses.

"The Americans were there," said Shehab. "They weren’t just witnesses. They were part of the operation against us."

Source: Iraq war logs: ‘The US was part of the Wolf Brigade operation against us’ by Martin Chulov in Baghdad The Guardian

Tehran’s influence in Baghdad politics described by western official as ‘nothing less than a strategic defeat’ for US

In the sprawling slums of Baghdad’s Shia heartland, signs of triumph are everywhere. Loyalists of Muqtada al-Sadr are posting giant images of the cleric in hospitals, schools and on neighbourhood squares. Cakes and nuts, usually reserved for festivals, are being served to guests of key officials.

Sadr’s followers say theirs is a movement whose time has come. It has been like this for 16 days, since the exiled cleric confirmed his support for a second term for the incumbent prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki. That move looks set to revolutionise political life in Iraq and, potentially, recast the brittle nation’s dealings with the west.

Hours after Sadr’s endorsement, on 1 October, the bulk of Iraq’s Shia political blocs announced that Maliki was their candidate for prime minister, after seven months of political torpor.

This crystallised two things; that Maliki would likely out-manoeuvre his rivals, and that those who supported him would want, in return, more than their share of treasure. On the regional chessboard that is Iraqi politics, Maliki’s move was akin to putting his key rival, Iyad Allawi, in check.

The price sought has now begun to emerge, along with a picture of how Sadr’s support was won and what it means for Britain and the US, who have invested 4,500 lives, billions of pounds and their international standing in the hope of shaping Iraq as a western-oriented democracy that realigns the regional balance.

According to Guardian sources, Maliki’s renewed grasp on power and the Sadrists’ elevation as influence brokers have been brought about by a consortium of the Middle East’s most-powerful Shia Islamic players, whose power bases are rooted in the region’s other main player, arch US foe Iran.

It has been spearheaded by the Islamic Dawa party, which opposed Saddam Hussein from a base in Tehran during the Ba’athist years, as well as by Maliki’s adviser, Tareq Najim Abdullah. Sadr and Ayatollah Kazem al-Haeri, a key exiled figure, who has acted as Sadr’s godfather, also led the way.

Qassem Suleimani, head of the al-Quds brigades, a division of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, and the head of Lebanese Hezbollah’s politburo, Mohammed Kawtharani, also heavily influenced the process. Above them all, two Shia Islamic overlords, Grand Ayatollah Khameini, and Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah are understood to have been involved in getting Sadr onside. In interviews over the past week, important players in Iraq’s power base have divulged the essence of what they believe the Sadrists demanded from Maliki’s envoys. It includes a grant of three ministries from his own quota, bringing to seven the number of ministries that the Sadrists could hold in a new government.

It also includes the position of secretary-general of the cabinet and, crucially, deputy positions in all the security agencies. A total of 100,000 roles allocated to Sadrists in government agencies appears to be on the table, as is a mass release of Sadrist prisoners.

A leading Sadrist, Nassar al-Rubaie, said that they were entitled to 25% from each ministry. The Sadrists won 40 seats in the 325-seat parliament. "The electoral process has delivered people who make decisions in this country and we are an important part of that group."

Rubaie said the proposals offered by Maliki’s envoys had been enough to win Sadr’s support, even though the cleric had publicly stated that he could not abide a second term for the prime minister whose government he abandoned in 2007. Maliki’s response then was to send the army to rout Sadr’s militia in Sadr City and Basra, igniting a bitter feud.

A high-ranking third party was needed to break the stalemate, as trust was non-existent on both sides. In early September, the Iranians made the first move. Haeri told his understudy that Maliki was the way forward; he was not perfect, but both he and the Iranians thought they could work with him.

Maliki then made his move. He sent Najim Abdullah and the head of the Dawa party, Abdul-Halim al-Zuhairi, to the Iranian shrine city of Qom, to meet with Sadr. There they met Suleimani, Iran’s most powerful military general and nemesis of the US.

Suleimani has led the Quds force for the past 20 years. "He runs Iran’s policy in Iraq," said a senior Iraqi official. "There is no dispute about this."

Suleimani is also a key link to Hezbollah in Lebanon and to Hamas in Gaza, supplying weapons, money and training to help oppose Israel. A senior US official in Baghdad claimed this summer that the Iranian military was responsible for about 25% of all US casualties in Iraq. US intelligence officials believe Suleimani’s unit accounted for nearly all of them.

According to an authoritative source, Kawtharani was also at the meeting in Qom. The two courtiers, Abdullah and Zuhairi, discussed options with Sadr. He liked what he heard, but would not sign on without a guarantor. Suleimani put his name forward, but Sadr was aiming higher. He sought two of Shia Islam’s highest authorities to ratify what was being put to him – Khameini and Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah.

Sadr was won over, but Nasrallah’s name came with a condition. According to the source, when Nasrallah, who remained in Beirut, was consulted, he asked for a return guarantee from Maliki that the US military would disappear completely from Iraq by the end of 2011.

"Maliki told them he will never extend, or renew [any bases] or give any facilities to the Americans or British after the end of next year," the source said. "They then went to try to smooth things over with the Syrians."

Syria was an obstacle in the process, partially because ill-feeling between Maliki and the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, had been exacerbated by Maliki alleging in August 2009 that Damascus was harbouring senior Ba’athist leaders who had blown up two ministries in the centre of Baghdad, undermining his security credentials.

"Zuhairi met Assad at Damascus airport. In public and private he was very much opposed to Maliki before the meeting," said the source.

Around the same time the Iranians made their second move. Ahmadinejad touched down in Damascus on 18 September on his way to the UN in New York. The pair spoke for two hours. According to a senior Iraqi government official in the days afterwards, Assad told his advisers: "Our Iranian friends want Maliki, and Maliki it is."

It was a crucial circuit-breaker, which allowed Maliki to make concrete plans for a new administration that would be dramatically different from the last, both in make-up and orientation.

Ahmadinejad returned from New York six days later and at a final meeting in Tehran the deal was ratified. The first domino was then tipped – the Sadrists’ announcement. Then came the Shia list’s pledge of support for Maliki.

The last seven years have been a tug of war for the heartland of Arabia, underpinned by the nagging strategic challenge of whether Iraq will emerge as a strategic ally of the west.

The US was a primary player, but as its military withdraws, its influence plummets. The US embassy in Baghdad had thrown its weight behind a second term for Maliki, believing his secular rival, Allawi, is untenable as leader because his support base is largely Sunni. "That position only served to embolden Maliki and the Iranians," said a senior western diplomat. "It was poorly conceived, poorly executed and utterly disastrous in its consequences."

Last week, a US official offered an explanation: "We have switched from frontline players with muscle that we could wield, to straight diplomacy."

In July, that same official said: "[The Sadrists'] world view and view of relations with the US is totally incompatible with any relationship that we could have."

The US transition from military overlord to would-be democratic partner has escaped no one’s attention, nor has the vacuum left behind gone unremarked.

Publicly, however, the Dawa party is maintaining a different line. "There is no contradiction between the Iranian point of view and the US view in forming a new government," said Zuhairi. "For example, the Americans have said this will be a Shia-led government. So, I say the Iraqi project is a reconciliation between Iran and the US."

A western official claimed it was "nothing of the sort", then, offering his view on recent US diplomatic efforts, said: "This is nothing less than a strategic defeat.

"They could not have got this more wrong if they tried."

How Iran brokered a secret deal to put its ally in power in Iraq | World news | The Guardian

Mixture of motives persuades villages to maintain practice that often leaves lasting effects on young girls

The old Kurdish midwife’s hands trembled alongside a bowl that she positions to catch dripping blood. She picked up a razor blade and sliced through a corner of paper, mimicking the ritual cut she has performed at least 500 times, on young girls’ genitals.

"In the name of God, the most compassionate and merciful," Naksheen Moustafa said. "That’s it! It’s simple. I have never had a problem with this procedure in all the time I have done it."

But in a small home on the outskirts of the same village in northern Iraq, Jiana Ali Mohammed sat on the floor, her wide eyes staring into the middle distance. Jiana, now 17, underwent female genital mutilation twice as a seven-year-old; once by a midwife in the morning, and the second time later that day by her grandmother, who thought the job had not been done properly. Her clitoris and labia were sliced away, a procedure far more invasive than the symbolic nip described by Moustafa. Jiana bled for days and lost movement for a while in her lower limbs.

She is developmentally delayed and socially backward. Her mother, Nazeka Shemen, blames her daughter’s woes on the trauma of that day.

All four of her daughters before Jiana also underwent genital mutilation, but she said she would never put a new daughter through the ordeal.

"I have come to accept that it was wrong," said Shemen. "I would not do this to another child and I regret doing what we have done. Everyone has done it in Rania, including me. It is not a practice that has been questioned until recently."

There was a widespread feeling among the Kurdish women watching Moustafa’s demonstration that the midwife was deliberately underestimating the cruelty of her cut, perhaps because of wariness about increasing scrutiny from the outside world.

For 20 years, the village elder has been the woman that parents take their daughters to in Rania village, in Iraq’s north, to undergo female genital mutilation, arguably in greater numbers proportionally than anywhere else in the Middle East. Around 90% of adult women in at least eight villages in the Sulaymaniyah district alone are believed to been subjected to the practice.

Moustafa, 68, learned her cottage craft from another old woman, who, until she died, had been one of the last practitioners of this highly contentious tradition in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Judging by the knowledge bestowed, neither Moustafa nor her predecessors could be deemed to be midwives in the true sense of the word. Clinical care appears to have been universally absent in the practice. So too, until very recently, was antiseptic or even basic surgical dressings. Instead, ash is often rubbed into the wound.

Family ‘honour’

The absence of modern medicine has not deterred many of the families in Rania and a swath of Iraq’s remote Kurdish north from continuing with a tradition that has been disavowed in much of Arab Iraq and by Islamic clerics across the region.

Even now, after more than two decades of public awareness programmes in often impoverished villages, parents are still sending their girls in large numbers, believing it to be the fulfilment of a Qur’an instruction, which will cause the girls no harm and will instead help purify the family home.

Unlike elsewhere in Iraq, the practice of female genital mutilation became entrenched in the Kurdish north as a convention passed on through the ages.

Recent research by Human Rights Watch showed that there are at least four factors driving this: a link to Kurdish identity, a religious imperative, social pressure, and an attempt to control a woman’s sexuality.

The mix of motivations has combined to give the custom a hold that prevails in the face of rulings from leading religious figures, a move by Kurdish law-makers to outlaw it, and the scorn of conservative societies outside the north who look down on the Kurds’ ways.

Recent studies, including an Iraqi human rights ministry survey conducted last year, show that up to 23% of Iraqi Kurdish girls under 13 have undergone female genital mutilation. However, the report also reveals the figure is sharply higher among girls aged 14 to 18 (45%), suggesting an apparent recent shift in attitudes.

Slowly, mothers in Rania and, in some cases, the sheikhs who offer religious authority for the practice, are beginning to reassess their views. A key reason for this is the palpable harm that has been done to girls like Jiana.

There is evidence in Rania that comprehensive slicing of a girl’s genitals has been commonplace.

Four women spoken to by the Guardian say they bled for many days after their procedures, which took place before any of the girls reached sexual maturity.

Two of them say they continue to suffer from infections. All the women said they were told that the procedures had upheld their family honour.

Others in the village say they have had no problem with the tradition. The Otthman family’s six daughters have all been attended to by Moustafa. "She came here with a ball of cotton and a razor," said the girls’ mother, Basra Sayed.

"I believe that this is prescribed by Islamic tradition and should be done to both boys and girls," she said. "The difference in our society has been that for the boys we get a doctor to do it, and for the girls we get a midwife.

"None of my daughters had any complications, but I have heard that there were girls who bled a lot and had to go to hospital. My girls, however, were cut during the morning and were fine by the afternoon."

Sayed insists that her daughters were not subjected to the procedure that removes their labia, or clitoris. "It was just like the old lady said, she was very professional and quick.

"Two of my daughters are now married," she added. "And they both fully enjoy their sexual lives."

Sayed’s words reflect the fact that inroads appear to have been made into at least one taboo – discussion about the impact of the procedure on a woman’s sexual health and enjoyment.

Human Rights Watch last year interviewed 31 victims, many of whom described traumatic experiences that have left lasting consequences. A report prepared by Asuda, the women’s rights group, also last year found sexual enjoyment in many victims was greatly diminished.

Religious debate

The best hope of eradicating female genital mutilation as a convention in the Kurdish north appears to rest with Muslim clerics. On that front, the prognosis appears mixed.

"We have seen some clerics prepared to accept that this is not sanctioned by religion," said the director of Asuda’s Suleimaneya office, Khanim Latif. "But there are others who still say strongly that it is."

Throughout Rania, there is a sense that more people than ever before are looking disapprovingly at the practice and, by extension, their society.

People here seem ready to accept change, but only if it is spelt out wholeheartedly by the clerics they have listened to for generations.

"We want the clerics to say, stop doing this," said Jian’s mother. "We are waiting for this and the time is right to do it."

The ageing midwife up the road also seemed willing to accept change.

"If a sheikh said today to stop this, I would stop it today," she said, dropping the razor blade and cotton wool into her bowl.

Her voice trailing away, she added: "This has never hurt anyone, but if it could … I don’t want to be the one responsible."

The razor and the damage done: female genital mutilation in Kurdish Iraq | World news | The Guardian

Plans to attack World Cup in South Africa never got off the page, Abdullah Azzam Salih Misfir tells Iraqi TV station.

The alleged al-Qaida leader accused of plotting to attack next month’s football World Cup in South Africa claims he had merely sketched notes for the idea and given them to a senior Iraqi militant, but had not heard back from him.

Abdullah Azzam Salih Misfar said his plans had not progressed past a wishlist phase and stemmed from ongoing attempts to find a way to punish Denmark for the publication by a Danish cartoonist two years ago of images of the prophet Muhammad. "It was only an idea to blow up the World Cup in South Africa," Saudi-born Misfar said in an interview in Baghdad today. "I wrote the idea and sent it to Abu Hamza."

Hamza, a senior al-Qaida leader in Iraq who was also known as Abu Ayub al-Masri, was killed last month. "It was relayed through other men, but I didn’t get a reply," Misfar said.

Misfar’s comments appear to have poured cold water over a major security scare on the eve of the World Cup.

Iraqi security chiefs made the shock claim that Misfar planned to target the World Cup in a press conference in Baghdad yesterday, leading to frantic phone calls from South African organisers.

Planning was said to have gone as high as the world’s second most wanted man, al-Qaida deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri.

But Misfar denied that today. "I did not have any contact with Ayman al-Zawahiri or Abu Omer al-Baghdadi. My link was through the Baghdad chief, his name was Munaf al-Rawi." Misfar, 30, said he was a mid-ranking al-Qaida leader who had been in Iraq since 2004.

Many alleged al-Qaida leaders or senior operatives have been killed or captured in the past two months, most stemming from the capture of Rawi, who was a Baghdad gopher for the terror organisation and a key link in a chain that relayed messages to and from the leaders.

Al-Qaida in Iraq this week announced it had appointed two new leaders to replace Masri and Baghdadi and vowed an escalation in bloodshed to avenge their deaths.

Misfir said al-Qaida in Iraq was now low in cash and he confirmed widespread suspicions that a spate of robberies of gold shops and moneychangers late last year was an attempt to get funds for subsequent terror plots.

Misfir today made a full statement to an Iraqi television station, al-Hurra, which will air tomorrow after first being viewed by government agents. He answered questions asked by the Guardian about the alleged World Cup plot.

Iraqi authorities have cast al-Qaida as a small but resolute band of operatives without the means to spark a new round of sectarian bloodletting, but who hope to wear down by attrition the government’s shaky security credentials ahead of the US withdrawal from Iraq.

An intelligence report received by Iraq this week shows a stronger than expected flow of foreign jihadis from the north-east Syrian border into northern Iraq.

The supply of reinforcements through Syria has been largely responsible for the numbers of foreign fighters in Iraq.

The US military and Iraqi forces have mounted repeated operations to block the area’s numerous ravines and valleys, but the report suggests that would-be militants are still finding a way through.

Source: World Cup bomb ‘plot’ was just an idea, says al-Qaida accused | by Martin Chulov in Baghdad | World news | The Guardian

Lauded band of rebels helped on the frontline of the insurgency from 2006, in many eyes saving Iraq from the abyss

Hours after burying his slain cousin, Muhammad Jassem stood in the scorching dirt of a former al-Qaida parade ground speaking about a lurking foe that he knows is hunting him, too.

Nearby, guards waited furtively at the entrance to the Islamic mourning tent for Sheikh Alman al-Shijah, blown apart last Friday by a bomb placed under his car. The rows of plastic seats set up to receive those paying condolences sat mostly empty, melting on the hard-baked plain in the village of al-Qadoon, in Diyala. It was here, Jassem says, that al-Qaida’s former leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, would receive cadres.

"I saw him here in 2005," he said. "He was appointing al-Qaida princes and assigning military roles. This was a difficult neighbourhood – and still is.

"They have tried everything to get us," he added, referring to militants he believes are still doing Zarqawi’s bidding. "And they will keep trying. This is still war up here. Our enemy may be cowards, but they are strong."

Sheikh Alman was a leader of the Sons of Iraq, the lauded band of rebels who helped turn the tide of the insurgency from 2006, in many eyes saving Iraq from the abyss. His killers had tried to slay him six times before they finally succeeded. His cousin, Jassem, is also a member. He says he has been the target of 13 would-be hits.

All around the country, Sons of Iraq leaders, also known as members of the Awakening Council, or al-Sahwa, rattle off similar numbers of attempts on their lives with a fatalistic calm. It is hard to find any member operating on the frontlines against Iraq’s rejuvenated insurgency who isn’t still being regularly threatened by hit squads. Most of their persecutors they claim to know. Many they believe have recently been freed from the now defunct US prison system in Iraq, which at its peak held almost 30,000 detainees. Many others had been rotated through the system during the blood-soaked years of 2006-07. Earlier this year, 15 Awakening members were killed in one night in Abu Ghraib. Things have got a lot worse since.

This week alone, nine members were killed in five days in one of the most lethal weeks the homegrown counter-insurgents have endured. One was slain along with his entire family of five.

Attempts on their lives are becoming such that even battle-hardened leaders, who have known little else but violence for almost five years, are now fearful for themselves and their families.

"I am very worried," said Sheikh Moustafa al-Kamal Shabib, a decorated Awakening Council leader from the south Baghdad suburb of Arab Jabour. From 2005 until early 2008, Sunni insurgents had full rein over the area’s farmlands and ran weapons into Baghdad across the Tigris River, which snakes through the area’s heart.

Sheikh Moustafa was one of many local leaders the US turned to in 2007 to capitalise on mini-rebellions in Sunni areas against al-Qaida groups which had begun to overplay their hands.

Initially, Iraq’s disenfranchised Sunni groups had largely welcomed as reinforcements for a burgeoning resistance the hordes of Arab jihadis who had swarmed across porous borders and sought refuge in places such as Ramadi, Fallujah, west Baghdad and Diyala. But when the guests started imposing sharia law, beheading people on street corners and demanding access to their daughters, hospitality turned into hostility.

"They were wrong and we fought them and killed them by the dozens," said Sheikh Moustafa. The US military locked up hundreds more alleged militants in the Dora neighbourhood of Baghdad alone who had operated with impunity during a total collapse of law and order. "For three years you couldn’t drive through here," he said as he pointed out homes flattened by US fighter jets during the surge of 2007.

Militants are not here in the numbers that they were before. But they are active: "Their preferred method is assassination with silencers. But they also put bombs under the cars of leaders."

Like all of Baghdad’s 241 remaining Sons of Iraq leaders, Sheikh Moustafa has been given three bodyguards paid for by the Iraqi government. The 1,400-odd foot soldiers who report to him throughout Arab Jabour have been paid $300 (£205) a month by the Iraqi government since the US military handed over responsibility from late-2008 as part of moves to take Iraq to full sovereignty and pave a way for an American exit.

Ever since, it has not been an easy road. The government of prime minister Nouri al-Maliki has had an uneasy relationship with the rebels, who 12 months ago numbered 130,000. Now they are down to 91,405 and within two months of an election result they are set to be no more.

By then, the government aims to integrate all remaining members into government ministries and security forces – budget shortfalls not withstanding.

The Americans came to trust the Awakening Council, with former US commanding general David Petraeus offering amnesties to some leaders.

However, Maliki and his advisers have not felt the same way, fearing the Sons of Iraq are infiltrated by Sunni militants who could use them as a Trojan horse to wreak further terror.

Major general Mudhir al-Mawla, the director of the Sons of Iraq file in Iraq’s national reconciliation commission, confirmed the scepticism in the government: "Ever since they began, there have been members of Maliki’s administration who oppose them," he said. "They said they are like a militia and they all need to be disarmed. But they have played a very important role in giving precise information because they are locals. They know the locals and they know where their allegiances lie."

In March last year, in a move that underscored the distrust, Maliki’s troops arrested a Sons of Iraq leader in the central Baghdad district of Fadhil and a two-day battle ensued. Ever since, he has been reluctant to travel to the frontline areas.

"[Maliki] came here once," said Awakening Council leader Sabah al-Mashadani in what was once another no-go zone in Baghdad, the former battlefield suburb of Adamiyeh. "He was very surprised when he was well received. He said: ‘I thought everyone hated me here’."

In Arab Jabour, Sheikh Moustafa has never seen the prime minister, but he has seen his special forces, who arrested the sheikh in January on trumped up charges that he had killed five local men in 2007. The US military quickly took responsibility for the killings and Sheikh Moustafa was released in Maliki’s name.

However, the episode underscored the fragility of his position, a feeling he claims is shared by the rank and file. "We are being hunted down. It has never been worse. I have been targeted by roadside bombs six times in the past four months."

Ten days ago, at the back of his family home, a $40,000 pond of fish was poisoned during the night by people he is adamant were linked to al-Qaida. Worse still, Sheikh Moustafa’s son spent February in hospital after buying an orange juice that was also laced with poison.

He strongly suspects that he knows who is targeting him. In the village of al-Qadoon, Muhammad Jassem also thinks he knows his family’s tormentor.

"That is the benefit of doing what we do," he said. "We know the people and we know where they have been."

In the nearby Diyala police station, Major Hisham al-Jalil, who has locked up most of the area’s criminals since 2006, said the spike in attacks was being perpetrated by men who had returned from the US prisons and who blamed the Sons of Iraq for having sent them there.

"They see them as traitors," he said. "They hate the security forces too, but their vengeance is even stronger for the al-Sahwa, some of whom they fought alongside as insurgents. It is only going to get worse here."

With the US military only three months away from having no further combat role in Iraq, the Sons of Iraq are feeling isolated and abandoned. Their legacy will shape the declining months of the seven-year occupation, a fact the US military knows well.

Pressed on the hardships the US-backed rebels are facing, US major general Joseph Reynes, who is responsible for the remaining American side of the Sons of Iraq project, said leaders he spoke to felt they had a national duty to ward off the resurgent militancy.

"I went to Fallujah recently and spoke with a Sahwa leader who said as an Iraqi he must stand his post. They are soldiers on the front lines. This is an insurgency. It’s tough. That’s why we stand here as brothers moving forward in this fight."

But Sheikh Moustafa feels that brotherhood may fade away as the US withdraws from the bitter battleground of Iraq. "We were there when the Americans wanted us and we have never left," he says. "But there will be no one here for us when the Americans are gone."

From local heroes to al-Qaida’s national nemesis

The Sons of Iraq grew out of a series of mini-rebellions against militants associated with al-Qaida that started in late 2006 – first in Anbar province, then spreading to Baghdad and elsewhere in the country.

The initial rebels included those who had been co-opted by al-Qaida, or had willingly offered their services as anti-occupation fighters before realising what that entailed. Al-Qaida were hounded out of Anbar, with American military backing, after over-playing their hand with locals. The then US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus (pictured), was quick to capitalise on the regional uprisings, which morphed into a nationwide rebellion against al-Qaida.

The US military offered many Sons of Iraq members amnesty and set up a formal programme, which at one stage paid 130,000 members, many of them former insurgents, $300 (£205) each a month.

The Sons of Iraq have been credited with a prominent role in stabilising the country. However, they have struggled to win the trust and full backing of the Shia-majority Iraqi government, which fears the Sons of Iraq ranks have been infiltrated by Sunni militants.

The Iraqi government has pledged to give all members jobs in either the security forces, or government departments. However, as the project winds down, Sons of Iraq members are being hunted down by insurgents who have been freed from US and Iraqi prisons and are determined to avenge old scores.

They turned the tide for America. Now, as withdrawal nears, Sons of Iraq pay the price | by Martin Chulov, reporting from Baquba | The Guardian

• Greater rates of cancer and birth defects near sites
• Depleted uranium among poisons revealed in report

Areas in and near Iraq’s largest towns and cities, including Najaf, Basra and ­Falluja, account for around 25% of the contaminated sites, which appear to coincide with communities that have seen increased rates of cancer and birth defects over the past five years. The joint study by the environment, health and science ministries found that scrap metal yards in and around Baghdad and Basra contain high levels of ionising radiation, which is thought to be a legacy of depleted uranium used in munitions during the first Gulf war and since the 2003 invasion.

The environment minister, Narmin Othman, said high levels of dioxins on agricultural lands in southern Iraq, in particular, were increasingly thought to be a key factor in a general decline in the health of people living in the poorest parts of the country.

"If we look at Basra, there are some heavily polluted areas there and there are many factors contributing to it," ­she told the Guardian. "First, it has been a battlefield for two wars, the Gulf war and the Iran-Iraq war, where many kinds of bombs were used. Also, oil pipelines were bombed and most of the contamination settled in and around Basra.

"The soil has ended up in people’s lungs and has been on food that people have eaten. Dioxins have been very high in those areas. All of this has caused systemic problems on a very large scale for both ecology and overall health."

Government study groups have recently focused on the war-ravaged city of ­Falluja, west of ­Baghdad, where the unstable security situation had kept scientists away ever since fierce fighting between militants and US forces in 2004.,

"We have only found one area so far in Falluja," Othman said. "But there are other areas that we will try to explore soon with international help."

The Guardian reported in November claims by local doctors of a massive rise in birth defects in the city, particularly neural tube defects, which afflict the spinal cords and brains of newborns. "We are aware of the reports, but we must be cautious in reaching conclusions about causes," Othman said. "The general health of the city is not good. There is no sewerage system there and there is a lot of stagnant household waste, creating sickness that is directly affecting genetics. We do know, however, that a lot of depleted uranium was used there.

"We have been regulating and monitoring this and we have been urgently trying to assemble a database. We have had co-operation from the United Nations environment programme and have given our reports in Geneva. We have studied 500 sites for chemicals and depleted uranium. Until now we have found 42 places that have been declared as [high risk] both from uranium and toxins."

Ten of those areas have been classified by Iraq’s nuclear decommissioning body as having high levels of radiation. They include the sites of three former nuclear reactors at the Tuwaitha facility – once the pride of Saddam ­Hussein’s regime on the south-eastern outskirts of Baghdad – as well as former research centres around the capital that were either bombed or dismantled between the two Gulf wars.

The head of the decommissioning body, Adnan Jarjies, said that when inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency arrived to "visit these sites, I tell them that even if we have all the best science in the world to help us, none of them could be considered to be clean before 2020."

Bushra Ali Ahmed, director of the Radiation Protection Centre in Baghdad, said only 80% of Iraq had so far been surveyed. "We have focused so far on the sites that have been contaminated by the wars," he said. "We have further plans to swab sites that have been destroyed by war.

"A big problem for us is when say a tank has been destroyed and then moved, we are finding a clear radiation trail. It takes a while to decontaminate these sites."

Scrap sites remain a prime concern. Wastelands of rusting cars and war damage dot Baghdad and other cities between the capital and Basra, offering unchecked access to both children and scavengers.

Othman said Iraq’s environmental degradation is being intensified by an acute drought and water shortage across the country that has seen a 70% decrease in the volume of water flowing through the Euphrates and Tigris rivers.

"We can no longer in good conscience call ourselves the land between the rivers," she said. "A lot of the water we are getting has first been used by Turkey and Syria for power generation. When it reaches us it is poor quality. That water which is used for agriculture is often contaminated. We are in the midst of an unmatched environmental disaster."

Source: Iraq littered with high levels of nuclear and dioxin contamination, study finds | World news | guardian.co.uk by Martin Chulov in Baghdad

A water shortage described as the most critical since the earliest days of Iraq’s civilisation is threatening to leave up to 2 million people in the south of the country without electricity and almost as many without drinking water.

An already meagre supply of electricity to Iraq’s fourth-largest city of Nasiriyah has fallen by 50% during the last three weeks because of the rapidly falling levels of the Euphrates river, which has only two of four power-generating turbines left working.

If, as predicted, the river falls by a further 20cm during the next fortnight, engineers say the remaining two turbines will also close down, forcing a total blackout in the city.

Down river, where the Euphrates spills out into the Shatt al-Arab waterway at the north-eastern corner of the Persian Gulf, the lack of fresh water has raised salinity levels so high that two towns, of about 3,000 people, on the northern edge of Basra have this week evacuated. "We can no longer drink this water," said one local woman from the village of al-Fal. "Our animals are all dead and many people here are diseased."

Iraqi officials have been attempting to grapple with the magnitude of the crisis for months, which, like much else in this fractured society, has many causes, both man-made and natural.

Two winters of significantly lower than normal rainfalls – half the annual average last year and one-third the year before – have followed six years of crippling instability, in which industry barely functioned and agriculture struggled to meet half of subsistence needs.

"For thousands of years Iraq’s agricultural lands were rich with planted wheat, rice and barley," said Salah Aziz, director of planning in Iraq’s agricultural ministry, adding that land was "100% in use".

"This year less than 50% of the land is in use and most of the yields are marginal. This year we cannot begin to cover even 40% of Iraq’s fruit and vegetable demand."

During the last chaotic five years, many new dams and reservoirs have been built in Turkey, Syria and Iran, which share the Euphrates and its small tributaries. The effect has been to starve the Euphrates of its lifeblood, which throughout the ages has guaranteed bountiful water, even during drought. At the same time, irrigators have tried tilling marginal land in a bid for quick yields and in all cases the projects have been abandoned.

"Not even during Saddam’s time did we face the prospect of something so grave," said Nasiriyah’s governor, Qusey al-Ebadi. Just east of the city, the Marsh Arabs are also on the edge of a crisis unprecedented even during the three decades of reprisals they faced under the former dictator.

"The current level of the Euphrates cannot feed the small tributaries that give water to the marshlands," he continued. "The people there have started to dig wells for their own survival. There is no water to use for washing, because it is stagnant and contaminated. Many of the animals have contracted disease and died and people with animals are leaving their areas."

Nowhere is Iraq’s water shortage more stark than in what used to be the marshlands. Towards the Iranian border and south to the Gulf, rigid and yellowing reeds jut from a hard-baked landscape of cracked mud.

Skiffs that once plied the lowland waters lie dry and splintering and ducks wallow in fetid green ponds that pocket the maze of feeder streams. Steel cans of drinking water bought by desperate locals line dirt roads like over-sized letter boxes.

The Euphrates, once broad and endlessly green, is now narrow and drab. In parts it is a slick black ooze, fit only for scores of bathing water buffalo. Giant pumps lay metres out of reach. Some are rusting. "Not long ago, the level of the Euphrates was at this rust line," said Awda Khasaf, a local leader in the al-Akerya marshlands, as he pointed at the dwindling river.

"It has now dropped more than 1.5m. This river feeds all the agriculture lands and marsh lands in Nasiriyah. It smells like this because it is stagnant," he said. "We turned to agriculture in 1991 after Saddam’s rampage, but now the government has ordered us to stop rice farming."

Further up the river Sheikh Amar Hameed, 44, from Abart village said: "We have lost the soul of our lives with the vanishing water. We have lost everything. We are buying drinking water now. The government must find a solution. The young will all become thieves. They have no prospects."

Iraq’s water minister, Dr Abdul Latif Rashid, this week estimated that up to 300,000 marshland residents are on the move, many of them newly uprooted and heading for nearby towns and cities that can do little to support them.

The Marsh Arabs are semi-nomadic and large numbers have remained displaced since Saddam drained the marshes in 1991.

"In the last 20-30 years our neighbouring countries have built a number of structures for collecting water or diverting water for their agricultural lands," Dr Rashid said.

"In some cases, they have diverted the path of the river for their internal use. This has had a very damaging effect. We have a large number of branches of the Tigris that we share with Iran. In most their volumes are low, or completely dried up. In 2006/07 [the marshlands] almost reached 75% of original levels. Now the surface water is around 20%. Water resources have this year become not only serious, but critical. Iraq has not faced a water shortage like this."

Officials have tried to compensate by digging wells and bores, especially in the ravaged provinces of the south and in Anbar, west of Baghdad. Delegations have also travelled to Turkey and Syria, where they were warmly received, but have achieved few changes. "We were expecting much more of a release from Turkey," Dr Rashid said. "Iran has been less receptive. We have had no response from them at all."

Source: Water shortage threatens two million people in southern Iraq | Martin Chulov in Nasiriyah, Iraq   | World news | guardian.co.uk