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In Iraq, a Lull or Hopeful Trend?
Lt. Brian Bifulco, 23, a platoon leader with the 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, walks with his interpreter through Sadiyah, a volatile area of southwestern Baghdad where militiamen have targeted Sunnis.
(By Joshua Partlow -- The Washington Post)
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As some threats in Iraq have subsided, new ones have emerged. Turkish soldiers now threaten major incursions and regularly shell mountainous Kurdish villages in the north in an attempt to combat separatist guerrillas.
[an error occurred while processing this directive]"Violence has not been reduced. This year was the bloodiest for all of the people in Kirkuk," said Hewa Fatih Abdullah al-Shwani, a Kurdish businessman who lives north of the city. He used to travel south to Baghdad and Basra to coordinate cement shipments, but now deals exclusively with Kurdish colleagues or arranges for his merchandise to come from neighboring Iran and Turkey.
"I do not see any improvement because terrorists keep changing their plans," he said. "When you arrest a thousand, you will find another thousand more because of unemployment, mistakes, chaos and the weakness of the central government."
Perceptions of safety and risk can change in an instant. One 50-year-old Sunni government employee, a lifelong resident of the northern Baghdad Sunni enclave of Adhimiyah, said that he knew his neighborhood was dangerous but that he felt comfortable because he knew his neighbors and because of his standing in the community.
On Monday, however, as he was driving to a market, gunmen stopped the man, who asked that his name not be published to protect his security. They bound his hands and feet with shoelaces, put a mask over his head and forced him into the trunk of their car, he said. One of the gunmen told him: "Do not beg me or say, 'I didn't do anything.' I do not know you and I only follow my orders," he recalled. "I received an order to take you and now I am waiting for another order, either to kill you or release you."
The next afternoon his captors released him unharmed. "I do not know what to do now. I do not leave my house. I've gathered my family around me and won't let my children go to school," the man said. "I thought it was safe to stay here."
Staff writer Ann Scott Tyson at the Pentagon, correspondent Amit R. Paley and special correspondents Saad al-Izzi in Baghdad, Muhanned Saif Aldin in Tikrit and Saad Sarhan in Najaf and other Washington Post staff in Iraq contributed to this report.
