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Iraq's ailing banking industry is slowly reviving
Despite the continuing war and political uncertainty, Iraq's long-suffering financial industry has begun creaking to life.
The revival is being led by some private Iraqi banks that have begun using new economic rules, harnessing the surge of reconstruction money and, in some cases, forging foreign partnerships.
— The New York Times, December 30, 2004
Platoon patrols through danger on a dreary day
The men of First Lieutenant Michael Anderson's platoon thought their Christmas Day patrol would be easy: just drive through town and photograph pictures of friendly local leaders. But a few minutes into the patrol, headquarters radioed in with a new order: head to Route Irish, the deadly stretch of road leading to the airport, and secure it for an hour.
— Boston Globe, December 26, 2004
PX offers taste of home for holidays
The customers may be thousands of miles away from their homes and families in America, but on US military bases in Iraq the holiday shopping season has arrived, and business is booming.
— Boston Globe, December 24, 2004
Iraq: Nightmare of Violence Dashes Hopes for a Free Press
The fall of Saddam's regime spawned dozens of new publications and broadcast outlets staffed by Iraqi journalists. But the initial euphoria has faded as working conditions for Iraqi journalists have descended into a nightmare.
— Carnegie Endowment for International Peace - Arab Reform Bulletin, December 2004
Lives uprooted inside Fallujah and Fallujah residents flee to escape expected attack on militants
Since Hamid Taleb Shal al-Zubavi's wife was struck with a bullet, the 53-year-old has been shuttling back and forth between Fallujah and Baghdad, braving checkpoints, military convoys and cross fire between U.S. troops and insurgents as many as four times a day to tend to his wife, daughter and newborn grandson. "We are merely trying to live," he said.
— Boston Globe , October 23, 2004 and San Francisco Chronicle, November 3, 2004
Enduring gunbattles, kidnappings and car bombs -- now common dangers -- have taken their toll. Fear is ravaging Baghdad. Its partners are the hatred, crime and violence that intrude into daily life. Eighteen months after the fall of Baghdad, this city of 5 million has become more unpredictable and violent.
— Newark Star-Ledger, October 10, 2004
Iraqi Airways flies again, with one jet
After lying all but dormant during 14 years of sanctions and still reeling from the damage it has suffered in the United States-led war, Iraq's national airline made a humble reappearance on the commercial aviation scene last month, with a single, 116-seat Boeing 737-200 flying to two nearby Middle East capitals, Damascus and Amman.
— The New York Times, October 6, 2004
Amid the bodies of children, grow anger and grief
Some of the children cry. Some refuse to speak, shivering in shock at the day's horror. Others lie lifeless in the morgue of Baghdad's Yarmouk Hospital.
— Newark Star-Ledger, October 1, 2004
Truckers say it's not safe out there
The last time Walid Mohammad Waij faced death on the highway, he yelled in its face. Armed bandits pulled up alongside his truck and ordered him to stop. Waij decided he'd had enough. "I yelled out the window at them," he recalls. "I told them, 'Even if you fire at my head, I am not going to stop.' "
— San Francisco Chronicle, September 28, 2004
Attacks on police kill 59 people, wound 114
At the scene of the capital's most deadly explosion since March, the nauseating odor of burnt flesh and streaks of blood littered the streets and sidewalks. Grieving civilians and emergency workers collected corpses and body parts, including a severed head that lay near one of about 15 stores crushed by the explosion.
— San Francisco Chronicle, September 15, 2004
Even regulars on 'Death Street' are stunned
It was one of those days in the Iraqi capital when the early-morning sounds of explosions shake the city awake and the rumble of tanks and screech of helicopters keep it sleepless late into the night.
— Newark Star-Ledger, September 13, 2004
Iraqis exhausted by daily drama find escape on new TV network
Since the fall of Saddam Hussein, Iraqis have been bombarded with satellite news channels serving up a 24-hour diet of car bombings and political turmoil. But so much current-events coverage has left a wide gap in Iraq's television menu: entertainment
— San Francisco Chronicle, August 7, 2004
In middle of hostile territory, efforts to patch things up
A convoy of armored humvees
and Bradley fighting vehicles suddenly descends on this tiny
hamlet. But instead of shooting insurgents, taking prisoners
or hauling off weapons, the soldiers of the 13th Corps Support
Command set up an impromptu medical clinic, and the only things
taken are Iraqi temperatures and pulses.
— San
Francisco Chronicle, July 6, 2004
Wenn die irakische
Regierung gehofft hatte, mit den Bildern vom Verhör Saddam
Husseins am vergangenen Donnerstag dem irakischen Ex-Präsidenten
endgültig seinen Nimbus nehmen zu können, so dürfte
die Rechnung nicht aufgegangen sein. Zumindest nicht bei der
irakischen Bevölkerung.
— Welt
am Sonntag, 4 Juli 2004
Hate fills abyss dividing U.S., Iraq
LSA Anaconda has become one of the numerous well-guarded American settlements attesting to the lack of contact with and the vast distance between U.S. personnel in Iraq and ordinary Iraqis, an isolation that has often resulted in American ignorance about Iraq.
— Newark Star-Ledger, June 28, 2004
Iraqis start to sound nostalgic about past: 'Lives are much worse' amid unrest, outages
The everyday disorder that is rattling cities across Iraq includes car bombs and kidnappings-for- ransom. Ordinary Iraqis complain that the freedoms, accomplishments and opportunities of the new era are clouded by violence and fear. Many say that under Saddam, at least they could go to the store or out for a picnic without fear of criminals, terrorists and gunfire.
— Newark Star-Ledger, June 27, 2004
France steps up its investments in Iran
Undeterred by Iran's pariah status in the United States and by the shortcomings of the country's commercial climate, French companies have been increasing their presence in the country in the last few years.
— The New York Times, June 23, 2004
Antique way of justice returns to Iraq
This is a story of contemporary Iraq, where a surge in violence and crime has fueled madness in a once staid society, where the absence of law and order has resulted in the return of ancient forms of justice.
— Newark Star-Ledger, May 30, 2004
Even in Iran, young turn to advice gurus from America
Like many of Iran's Shiite Muslims, Babak Moradi has a "marja," a source of emulation who serves as life example and spiritual guide. But unlike many of his fellow Shiites, Moradi's marja is not a white-bearded ayatollah or a high-ranking cleric. He follows the lead of Jack Welsh, former CEO of General Electric Co.
— Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 25, 2004
In Mideast aviation, vying to be a new global hub
In contrast to a lingering slump in the airline industry elsewhere around the globe, business and leisure travel in the Middle East and South Asia has surged, heating up regional competition and spurring multibillion-dollar expansions by Persian Gulf carriers and airports.
— The New York Times, April 13, 2004
To Iran, unrest next door is a double-edged sword
Iranian officials are eyeing the unrest in neighboring Iraq with a mixture of feelings: a sense of vindication that Iraq's U.S.-led occupiers are in trouble, unable to fulfill their plans to reshape the Middle East, and alarm at the escalation of violence.
— Newark Star-Ledger, April 8, 2004
A young cleric taps deep vein of anger
The brooding, bearded young man stared at the ground, seething with anger at the U.S.-led occupation authority and its handpicked Governing Council. Moqtada al-Sadr minced no words about his plans and intentions.
— Newark Star-Ledger, April 6, 2004
For Iraqi Jews, the road home is now in sight
Regina Sehayek died 12 years ago, never again having seen her beloved hometown. But this month, her granddaughter, Marina Benjamin, returned to Iraq to retrace and reclaim her grandmother's shattered life and to write a book chronicling Iraq's Jews.
— Newark Star-Ledger, April 5, 2004
Scarce jobs, unsafe streets tarnish gains in freedom
Haydar Kamel had a
free afternoon but couldn't decide whether to catch a racy flick
like "Showgirls'' or "The Story of O'' at one of the movie theaters
on Al-Sadoun Street, peruse one of several hundred newspapers
or watch satellite television, options he never had under Saddam
Hussein.
— San
Francisco Chronicle, March 19, 2004
Baghdaddios:
Cold-calling Iraq
Most contracts in Iraq have gone to big companies with
political clout. But the billions to be had have also lured
some of the world's most adventurous entrepreneurs to one of
the world's most impossible places, where insurgents with rocket-propelled
grenades take potshots at hotels favored by Westerners.
— Money
magazine, March 2004
Many of Iraq's 4 million Kurds, who fought side by side with Americans in capturing oil-rich cities such as Khaneqin and Kirkuk, say they paid their dues under Saddam Hussein, enduring his regime's violence and racial policies and giving up martyrs in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Now, they say, it's time to collect.
— Newark Star-Ledger, March 11, 2004
Reformists dreams fade in Iran
Once the two young men were leaders of the student movement at the centre of a great, hopeful drive to change Iran's repressive political and social system from within. Now the two young bright Iranians and former student activists - are in hiding, keeping to themselves in a tiny apartment at the mountainous northernmost stretch of the metropolis.
— The Straits Times, Feb. 28, 2004
Extensive coverage of Iran's 2004 parliamentary elections. Iranian MPs vote to defy conservative watchdog group that has banned thousands of candidates from running. One by one, dozens of deputies walk to the podium and submit resignations in an extraordinary session of parliament. A crisis looms in Iran as both sides battle over polls. Y In a makeshift mosque tucked inside a half- built apartment complex deep in the city's poor south, one campaign adopts the reformist spirit. On election day four years ago, the queues of voters extended into the streets, with jubilant Iranians talking politics and singing songs. But this year, disillusioned stay away . Even after the elections, many Iranians express bitterness at conservatives' victory. But analysts say a new political conflict could be shaping up between religious fundamentalists and pragmatic conservatives.
— Daily Star, San Francisco Chronicle, Scotsman, Newark Star-Ledger, January 26 to February 28, 2004
Train explosion in Iran kills 200 and Crash scene blast kills hundreds
The sickening smell of sulfur hung in the air after a runaway train carrying a lethal mix of chemicals and fuel derailed, burst into flames and hours later exploded with devastating force in northeast Iran on Wednesday, killing more than 200 people. The explosion outside Neyshabur was so powerful that residents thought it was an earthquake. Seismologists recorded a 3.6-magnitude tremor.
— San Francisco Chronicle and Scotsman, February 19, 2004
Foreign
cellphone bidders still in running in Iran
Faced with growing demand for mobile phone service and an unreliable,
overburdened state-run network, Iran is moving ahead with its
plan to hand control of a second network to one of five foreign-led
consortiums that have made a short list of bidders.
— The New York Times, Feb. 11, 2004
25 years after revolution Iran is facing new realities
Here, at the school where
the revolution was hatched, clerics met for years to pave the
way for the return of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Today, Refah
is an elementary school for girls, who have festooned its walls
with drawings and poems decrying the shah, America and Israel
and praising the leader of the revolution.
— San Francisco Chronicle, Feb. 11, 2004
Passing
on their know-how
As much as the past year has transformed Iraq, so it has changed
the U.S. Army, giving soldiers new combat and survival skills,
as well as new insights into another part of the world.
— Washington Times, Jan. 21, 2004
Iraq's airwaves, music stores flooded with songs calling for anti-American resistance
You can almost dance to the rhythm, but the lyrics call
for guerrilla war. "America has come and occupied Baghdad,"
singer Sabah al-Jenabi croons. "The army and people have weapons
and ammunition. Let's go fight and call out the name of God."
— The Daily Star, Jan. 21, 2004
Computer
expert argues direct elections are possible
The United States and its allies say direct elections are impossible
before power is handed over to an Iraqi government in July.
Ahmad Mokhtar, a courtly looking computer whiz, says they're
wrong.
— Newark Star Ledger, Jan. 20, 2004
Protesting
Iraqi Marriage Vote
A decision by Iraq's American-backed Governing Council to hand
control of marriage and divorce laws to religious authorities
has sparked outrage among Iraqi women, who fear clerics will
revoke the rights they enjoyed under the ousted regime.
— New York Newsday, Jan. 19, 2004
Early each morning for seven months, Aziz Hadi has taken a three-hour taxi ride to the parking lot of this dusty prison compound. She holds a quiet vigil for her son, Haydar Madhad, arrested by U.S. forces on suspicion of taking part in an insurrection against the occupation.
— Newark Star Ledger, Jan. 9, 2004
No
parades will mark Iraqi army's birthday
Under Saddam Hussein, Jan. 6 was Army Day -- a day marked by
garish military parades and pay bonuses for soldiers.
But today, Iraqis are confronting the bloody legacy and tangled history of their military, for some an instrument of atrocities, for others a symbol of tattered national pride.
— San Francisco Chronicle, Jan. 6, 2004
