2007 / 2006 / 2005 / 2004 / 2003 / 2002 / 2001 and earlier
The day the hatred boiled over in Balad
There were no heroes here. When gunmen murdered dozens of people in this once peaceful Shiite market city over two days last month, no one stepped in to stop the killing. Not U.S. forces, whose stated purposes in Iraq include preventing all-out civil war. Not the Iraqi security forces, who mostly turned a blind eye to the massacre. Not the people of Balad, who allowed decades of fear and hatred to overwhelm their better instincts.
— Los Angeles Times, November 7, 2006
The Roots of Hezbollah's Clout Lie in Iran
A tour of Hezbollah's state within a state in southern Lebanon reveals a replica of the distinctive institutions and styles of the Islamic Republic's ideological machinery, and offers clues to the militant group's powerful hold here.
— Los Angeles Times, September 10, 2006
A Family Connected to Its Battered Land
It was six years ago when the tobacco farmer and his wife planted grapes alongside their home in this lush valley of rocky ridges and steep slopes, picking up the pieces of their lives once more after the last wave of war subsided. The farmer watched with satisfaction as the vines spread across the wooden trellises. On slow afternoons, after tending to his fields, he basked in the sun and picked sweet grapes.
— Los Angeles Times, September 5, 2006
Kurds Recall Their '88 Flight to Mountains
Rumors of war rumbled across Kurdistan's grassy hilltops. Legions of Saddam Hussein's troops were coming in tanks, trucks and airplanes to crush the Kurds' long-festering uprising. Filled with dread, Shazada Saeed and her family prepared to do what Kurds had always done to escape the brutality of their mightier Arab, Turkish and Persian neighbors.
— Los Angeles Times, August 21, 2006
The uniformed gunmen knocked politely on Hamid Shammari's door. They took away his 20-year-old son, promising to let him go the next day. He hasn't been seen or heard from since that dreadful Sunday that changed the Jihad neighborhood of western Baghdad, and perhaps the rest of Iraq.
— Los Angeles Times, July 23, 2006
Portrait of a Beseiged Capital The frail little girl with the thick shock of black hair and tiny arms lay nearly motionless, shivering slightly and breathing gently behind the curtain in the emergency room. Blood stained her orange pajamas and the blue plastic sheet beneath her; an intravenous drip nourished her wounded body. — Los Angeles Times, July 10, 2006
A girl injured in a mortar attack on July 9, 2006 lies in the emergency room at central Baghdad's Yarmouk Hospital, where the injured and slain roll in day after day. |
|
Victims in Mass Graves Hid Clues in Clothing
Perhaps they were so terrified they didn't trust the officers who demanded their identification cards and they hid the cards beneath layers of clothes. Or maybe they sensed their horrible fate and decided against giving up the last legal proof of their lives before gunshots turned them into anonymous corpses to be devoured by the desert. Whatever their reasons, more than 10% of the victims found thus far in Saddam Hussein-era mass graves managed to die with their Iraqi identity cards still with them. The phenomenon has dramatically altered the course of the investigation into the former regime's alleged crimes by allowing prosecutors to trace the victims back to their hometowns and construct more complete narratives of their harrowing journeys toward death.
(See "Examining Mass Graves," a photo slideshow of the forensics laboratory investigating Saddam Hussein's crimes.)
— Los Angeles Times, June 27, 2006
Uprooted Iraqis Add to Woes of War-Torn Land
The Hotel Karbala has kept pace with Iraq's changing times. In its halcyon days, it housed Shiite Muslim tourists visiting the shrines of this southern Iraqi city. It later became a base for Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, and played host to foreign troops after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. But in a sign of the current troubles, the ramshackle two-story concrete building and its weed-strewn lot have become housing for more than 70 Shiite Muslim families who fled violence elsewhere in the country.
— Los Angeles Times, June 2, 2006
After years of zigzagging between career paths and coasts in the United States, ex-Marine Robert Tappan converted to Shiite Islam five years ago, saved up money and secured some loans. Last fall, he headed to Qom, Iran, with his wife, Sara, to make a spiritual connection with his newfound faith as well as finish his doctorate in Islamic Studies. But he has found himself struggling for answers about his new religion as well as his relationship to the U.S. in this conservative town, the religious center of a country now locked in a war of words with Washington and the West over its pursuit of nuclear technology, its ties to militant groups abroad and its role in neighboring Iraq.
— Los Angeles Times, May 27, 2006
Iraq's Shiites Now Chafe at U.S. Presence
For three years, most of Iraq's Shiites welcomed - or at least tolerated - the U.S. presence here. In the weeks immediately after the American-led invasion, the mothers and sisters of Saddam Hussein's Shiite victims clutched clumps of dried earth as they wept over mass graves and thanked God for ending their oppression. But now the mood has shifted. Perceived American missteps, a torrent of anti-U.S. propaganda and a recently emboldened Shiite sense of political prowess have coalesced to make the south a fertile breeding ground for antagonism toward America's presence.
— Los Angeles Times, May 6, 2006
Najaf's Elite Clerics Playing Key Role in Iraq Now
Long gone are the days when the clergy and students in this city of shrines and seminaries confined their debates and studies to arcane questions of Islamic jurisprudence. Now the talk in the libraries, teahouses and Internet cafes is almost always about politics: the deadlock over government formation in Baghdad, the violence between Shiite and Sunni Muslims, when to get American troops out of the country. Most often, discussion turns to how much this city's Shiite clerical establishment should participate in the governing of Iraq.
— Los Angeles Times, April 17, 2006
No Answers Yet in Disputed Iraq Raid
When the raid was over, the United States thought it had scored an unqualified triumph, backing a special unit of Iraqi soldiers who freed the hostage and killed 16 gunmen. But minutes after the March 26 incident, Iraq's state-controlled television broadcast a vastly different account: U.S. and Iraqi forces had raided a Shiite Muslim house of worship and brutally killed and wounded innocent people gathered for prayer. The parties involved - the gunmen, victims, U.S. and Iraqi soldiers - have proved hard to trace, and efforts to uncover what really happened at the Mustafa hussainiya often raise more questions than answers.
— Los Angeles Times, April 16, 2006
With Each Mile, the Divisions Deepen
In quiet moments, especially once the sunlight has begun to fade, a passerby can almost imagine the former glory of Karadat Mariam, once Baghdad's most upscale neighborhood. Palm trees shade broad avenues. Hedge groves shield stately villas. Young men and women in gym shorts jog along sidewalks. But such moments pass quickly. A low-flying Black Hawk helicopter roars overhead or a convoy of Humvees pushes through the 15-foot blast walls and tangles of barbed wire that surround you here in the Green Zone, the country's fortress-like administrative center.
— Los Angeles Times, March 20, 2006
Radical Iraqi Cleric Expands His Reach
Muqtada Sadr's expanding web of power starts right here, on the teeming streets of a neighborhood in northeastern Baghdad named after his assassinated father and uncle. It begins with charities and public services, such as subsidized cooking fuel, street cleaning and soccer games for the aimless boys of the Shiite Muslim ghetto.
— Los Angeles Times, March 13, 2006
Rebels' Arsenal Includes Politics
Once viewed as a series of scattered cells with unfocused goals, Iraqi insurgents have begun to develop a coordinated political agenda, reaching out to Sunni Arab politicians and distancing themselves from foreign fighters whose attacks against civilians have alienated possible allies in a new government.
