MORE HEADACHES FOR OBAMA: IRAQ IS UNRAVELING---NEW YORK TIMES

March 16, 2009
With Local Control, New Troubles in Iraq

By ROD NORDLAND
THE NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/16/world/middleeast/16iraq.html?ref=worldspecial

BAGHDAD — Iraqis are in many ways taking to heart the adage that all politics is local, as Americans hand over to them ever greater control of affairs in the provinces. That local control, however, has brought more horror stories than successes in the past few days.

In Anbar Province, six former Camp Bucca detainees were on their way home on Friday when local police officers abducted and killed them in revenge for their days as insurgents, according to relatives of the victims.

In Wasit Province, a hard-line new police chief appointed by the prime minister has been transferring corrupt policemen out of the area, but local political opponents say that is the reason the local murder rate seems to have doubled.

And in a remote part of northern Diyala Province, Iraqi soldiers surrounded a refugee camp for Iranian dissidents, Camp Ashraf, blockading food and water to the roughly 3,500 residents there. A spokesman for the dissidents’ group, the People’s Mujahedeen Organization of Iran, said Sunday that only the presence of Americans had prevented an attack on them.

Continue reading: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/16/world/middleeast/16iraq.html?ref=worldspecial