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March 20th 2006, was the third anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq. While much of the world marked the anniversary with protests against the continuing occupation, there was little notice in Iraq itself, where conditions for ordinary Iraqis is growing worse by the day. The American led interim government spent over $20bn, yet left Iraqis with less electricity, less clean water and even worse hospitals than under Saddam.

Riverbend from "Baghdad Burning" writes:
Three years and the electricity is worse than ever. The security situation has gone from bad to worse. The country feels like it’s on the brink of chaos once more- but a pre-planned, pre-fabricated chaos being led by religious militias and zealots.
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I’m sitting here trying to think what makes this year, 2006, so much worse than 2005 or 2004. It’s not the outward differences- things such as electricity, water, dilapidated buildings, broken streets and ugly concrete security walls. Those things are disturbing, but they are fixable. Iraqis have proved again and again that countries can be rebuilt. No- it’s not the obvious that fills us with foreboding.
The real fear is the mentality of so many people lately- the rift that seems to have worked it’s way through the very heart of the country, dividing people. It’s disheartening to talk to acquaintances- sophisticated, civilized people- and hear how Sunnis are like this, and Shia are like that… To watch people pick up their things to move to “Sunni neighborhoods” or “Shia neighborhoods”. How did this happen?

On March 9th, Iraq’s government engaged in a mass hanging of 13 prisoners. The executions were videotaped, which underscores the aim of using them as a means of state intimidation. Kidnappings and sectarian killings plague most of the country and there are signs that some of the death squads engaged in killings are tied to the ruling SCIRI party. Thousands of Sunni and Shiite families are fleeing their homes and moving to areas where their respective sects are in majority. Former interim Iraqi prime minister Iyad Allawi reports that "[t]here are no institutions that could protect people, there are definitely ethnic cleansing happening and taking place here and there in the country, so this is in fact a level of a civil war."

The main Shia religious leader Ayatola Sistani has come out openly for the execution of gay Iraqis (reports 1 | 2 | 3). Kurds who on March 16 protested corruption in the management of the memorial for victims of Halabja may also face the death penalty. Students are accusing police of excessive force during a protest about the lack of services at Koya University, in northern Iraq. Security forces quickly surrounded the protesters, shooting in the air to disperse them. Some students were beaten with rifle butts and electric-shock sticks, according to organisers of the demonstration and video footage taken by participants.

The US and its allies in Iraq are holding more than 14,000 civilian prisoners—in some cases for years—without charges or trials, while torture and abuse in detention camps are now worse than when the horrors of Abu Ghraib were exposed nearly two years ago. US troops are also alleged to have engaged in execution of civilians; the U.S. military is conducting a criminal investigation into allegations that marines shot and killed 15 civilians, including seven women and three children, in the Iraqi town of Haditha last November in an apparent act of revenge for the death of a U.S. soldier by a roadside bomb

Top Ten Catastrophes of the Third Year of American Iraq | Sectarian Internal Migration Plagues Iraq | In memory of those who have died in Iraq | 3 Years After U.S. Invasion Two Wounded Iraqi Children and Their Fathers Tell Their Story | A Family In Baghdad:Iraq is ruined… | IRAQ: the tortured years 2003-2006

A dead body found in Iraq has been identified as that of missing US hostage Tom Fox, the US State Department has said. Fox, who had been an activist with the Christian Peacemaker Teams, was abducted along with three colleagues in late 2005. A video of British citizen Norman Kember and Canadians James Loney and Harmeet Singh Sooden was shown on Al-Jazeera last week, with a superimposed date of February 28th. Although the three hostages were alive in the video, their current condition is not known. Tom Fox was 54 years old. Before his abduction, he had been blogging about his experiences in Iraq.

"Waiting in the Light," Tom Fox's blog | Free the Captives website

CPT's statement about the death of Tom Fox | Why are we here? was Tom Fox's last Iraq Diary entry | 12/12 story about the abductees | Palestine demonstrations in solidarity with the CPT four: 1 | 2 | Article questioning Iraqi death squads | UFPJ's appeal to save the CPT Four | Electronic Intifada's coverage

On February 22nd, 2006, a bomb destroyed the dome of the Al Askari Mosque in the northern Iraqi city of Samarra. The remains of the tenth and eleventh Shia Imams, Ali al-Hadi and his son Hassan al-Askari, rest at the shrine and it stands adjacent to a shrine to the twelfth, or hidden Imam, Muhammad al-Mahdi. Juan Cole reports: "The Twelfh Imam or Mahdi is believed by Shiites to have disappeared into a supernatural realm from which he will someday return. Some Shiites think his second coming is imminent. Muqtada all-Sadr and his followers are among them ... Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is also a firm believer in the imminent coming of the Mahdi. "In a gesture of goodwill, Iraqi Sunnis in Samarra helped work to rebuild the mosque.
Samarra: Shia pilgrimage centre | History of the Shrine at Samarra | Bombers spent long hours planting explosives overnight

The destruction of Al-Askariya brought tens of thousands of Shiite youth onto the streets, vowing to exact retribution on Sunnis and the US-led occupation forces. The Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigade militia of the Shiite Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) took over entire suburbs of Baghdad, Basra, Amarra, Najaf, Karbala, Nasiriya and other southern Iraqi cities. Americans in Iraq initially were powerless when the crisis broke out on Wednesday, and could only hope that the Shiite clerics would calm people down. They only gradually realized that the clerics were equally capable of stirring people up, and that the clerics themselves were under enormous pressure from enraged followers to do something. "Sunni leader Tariq al- Hashimi threatened reprisals for reprisal killings. Abdul Aziz al-Hakim blamed the US for holding back the Badr Corps. Grand Ayatollah Sistani called for nonviolent street protests that he must know won't be nonviolent. Iran is blaming Bush and the Israelis" On February 26th, Muqtada al-Sadr said before a big crowd of his supporters in Basra, "I call for a united, peaceful demonstration in the capital, Baghdad, which you will organize at a specific time, involving Shiites, Sunnis and others, in which you will demand the withdrawal of the Occupying forces, and call for mutual love among you." He made an attempt to rein in the Mahdi Army militia, whom Sunnis accuse of burning Sunni mosques in Baghdad after the Samarra attack. By February 28th, As many as 1,300 people may have died in the wave of sectarian violence that swept Iraq. Most of the dead had been shot, knifed or garroted, often with their hands tied execution-style behind their backs.
2/24: Democracy Now : Baghdad Imposes Daytime Curfew | Baghdad Under Daytime Curfew, Qaradawi Urges Restraint | Rockets hit Iraq Shia tomb
2/25: Violence in Baghdad, Samarra Curfew Partially Observed | Makkah Imam Urges Iraqis to Cool Their Guns | Raed: Shia and Sunni Iraqis ask the Occupation to Leave
2/26: Attacks push Iraq to brink | More Shrines Destroyed, 60 Killed - Sistani forms Militia | A Family In Baghdad: Reflections On The Imamain Shrine
2/27: Dozens killed after Baghdad lifts curfew | Sectarian crisis propels firebrand cleric to fore
2/28: Iraq: Slipping Back Into Unrest | Iraq PM defiant after bloody week | Mortar Strike on Sunni Mosque Kills 4 - Violence Subsides | Bahrainis Continue Protests Over Samarra Bombing
3/1: Iraq: After Askariya | Deadly Sectarian Violence kills 76, Wounds 179
3/2: Iraq: On the brink | There is ethnic cleansing | Gangs 'kill freely' in Iraq chaos | Kurds, Sunnis Attempting to Dump Jaafari - Violence Leaves 30 Dead

Iraq's defence minister says a civil war will never end if it erupts as violence escalates across Iraq. Iraqi blogger Riverbend writes:
"It does not feel like civil war because Sunnis and Shia have been showing solidarity these last few days in a big way. I don’t mean the clerics or the religious zealots or the politicians- but the average person. Our neighborhood is mixed and Sunnis and Shia alike have been outraged with the attacks on mosques and shrines. The telephones have been down, but we’ve agreed upon a very primitive communication arrangement. Should any house in the area come under siege, someone would fire in the air three times. If firing in the air isn’t an option, then someone inside the house would have to try to communicate trouble from the rooftop."
Life-and-death struggle for Iraq | Long path to Iraq's sectarian split | Iraq's Going According to the Plan? Death Squads, Shrine Bombers, Civil War | Iraq Cracks: And Now Come the Death Squads | The Iraq "Civil War" myth | Bush administration drags Iraq towards the abyss of civil war | Iraqi Sectarianism: Inherited, Irreversible?

Pictures of Iraqi prisoners—naked, wounded, covered with blood, women’s underwear draped over their heads, bound in painful and degrading “stress positions”—were broadcast on Australian television Wednesday February 16th, further exposing the horrors inflicted at the US military’s prison camp at Abu Ghraib and similar facilities across the globe.
New Abu Ghuraib Photos Published | The Abu Ghraib files (links to all photos) | Children raped at Abu Ghraib | Iraq Seethes over Abu Ghraib | Previous Coverage Of Iraqi Prisoner Abuse: 1 | 2 | 3

Video images of British soldiers brutally beating a group of Iraqi teenagers have also recently come to light. Soldiers are shown chasing youths, dragging four of them into a compound and beating them with batons and kicking various parts of their bodies — with at least one blow to the genitals. The attack went on for a minute, with 42 blows inflicted in that time. The News of the World said there was also one of a soldier kicking a dead Iraqi in the face. Shielded from public gaze by the camp wall, the soldiers are seen beating their captives, whilst another provides commentary: “Oh yes! Oh yes! You’re gonna get it. Yes, naughty little boys! You little f***ers, you little f***ers. DIE! Ha, ha!” All but one of the captives are barefoot, and all are unarmed, dressed only in pants and t-shirts. One prisoner is seen pleading “No! Please!” as he tries to stop the assault, whilst the unseen commentator ridicules his cries and his accent, “No, pleeese—don’t hurt me.”
This is the real outrage | NPR Audio | Video fallout hits UK Iraq troops

Meanwhile Iraq has launched an investigation into claims that an Iraqi interior ministry "death squad" has been targeting Sunni Arab Iraqis. The Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS), the largest religious Sunni body in Iraq, said the death squad discovery was not an isolated incident. "It's not just one death squad. There are many," an AMS spokesman told AFP, declining to be named because of fear for his life. "In the northern Baghdad district of Hurriyah alone, some 70 young men from our community have been killed by these units, and the overall toll figure is likely to be more than 1,000 and includes 20 imams," he asserted.
From Jan 2005: US Military Considering Modelling War In Iraq After Reagan's War In El Salvador

2/12/2006 The Shia bloc set to lead Iraq's first full-term government has picked PM Ibrahim Jaafari as its candidate for prime minister in the new cabinet. Mr Jaafari won by one vote over Vice-President Adel Abdel Mahdi.
Jaafari Wins on Basis of Dawa, Sadrist Vote: Stability of UIA In Question | Shias pick kingpin

The December 15th Iraqi election produced a parliament divided along sectarian and ethnic lines. The Shiite fundamentalist United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), which dominates the existing transitional government of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, won 128 seats. A large UIA vote in Baghdad was mainly due to the participation of supporters of the cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. The parties most clearly identified with the US occupation did not fare well. The Iraqi National List led by longtime CIA asset Iyad Allawi—who was installed by the Bush administration as Iraq’s interim prime minister in 2004—won only 25 of the 275 seats despite a massive advertising campaign and barely concealed US backing. The Iraqi National Congress of Ahmed Chalabi, who helped the Bush administration to fabricate many of its claims that the Hussein regime was assembling “weapons of mass destruction,” did not win a single seat.
Read More | Sunni Arab Politicians threaten Civil Disobedience | Ethnic Tensions Rising in Kirkuk | Sadrists Demand any Prime Minister Call for US Troop Withdrawal | Basra governor threatens to stop liaison with British | Sunni Arabs warn of Paralysis | Coverage Of The 2005 UIA Election Win

According to Iraqi blogger Riverbend:
The fact that a Shia, Iran-influenced religious list came out on top is hardly surprising. I’m surprised, however, at Iraqis who seem to be astonished at the outcome. Didn’t we, over the last three years, see this coming? Iranian influenced clerics had a strong hold right from 2003. Their militias were almost instantly incorporated into the Ministry of Interior and the Ministry of Defense as soon a move was made to create new Iraqi security forces. Sistani has been promoting them from day one.
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Shia religious parties, like SCIRI and Da’awa, have decidedly changed their tone in the last year. During 2003, they were friends of America- they owed the US their current power inside of the country. Today, as Iraqis are becoming more impatient with the American presence inside of Iraq, they are claiming that they will be the end of the ‘occupiers’. They openly blame the Americans for the lack of security and general chaos. The message is quite different. In 2003, there was general talk of a secular Iraq; today, that no longer seems to be an option.

In 2003, Jaffari was claiming he didn’t want to see Iraqi women losing their rights, etc. He never mentioned equal rights- but he did throw in a word here and there about how Iraqi women had a right to an education and even a job. I was changing channels a couple of weeks ago and I came across Jaffari speaking to students from Mustansiriya University
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On his right sat an Ayatollah with a black turban and black robes. He looked stern and he nodded with satisfaction as Jaffari spoke to the students (or penguins). His speech wasn’t about science, technology or even development- it was a religious sermon about heaven and hell, good and evil.
Read More | Past Coverage Of Fundamentalism In Iraq

Parliamentary elections were held on December 15th in Iraq. Turnout was estimated at nearly 70%. Unlike the previous elections this year, Sunni Arabs turned out in large numbers. Many Sunnis said they were fed up with the situation in Iraq and "were ready to take a stab at post-Baathist Iraqi politics".
Juan Cole reports that "It is not actually a positive sign for the Americans that Sunni Arabs came out to vote in order to get rid of them, to see if they couldn't get rid of the current pro-American government, to underline that the armed struggle will continue, and to prove that Sunni Arabs (20% of so of the population) are a majority of the country! The American faith that if people go to the polls it means they won't also be blowing things up is badly misplaced."
Shia fundamentalist parties are expected to have done well in the election, and some expect the results to be a victory for Iran.
Voting In The Iraqi Elections... From The Bay Area | Voting In Iraq: A Family in Baghdad | Iraq counts ballots after landmark vote | Snipers and sandbags - Iraq votes

On December 15th, 2005, Parliamentary Elections are scheduled to take place in Iraq. The elections are not being held in accordance with international standards of fairness; Several candidates have already been assassinated or attacked, and most of the 7000 or so cannot come out in public or they would be killed, too. Citing security fears, Iraq's electoral committee said a limited number of international observers, mainly staffers of foreign embassies will oversee the voting. In a sign of likely fraud, hundreds of thousands of blank ballots like those to be used in this week's Iraqi elections have been found on a tanker truck which entered the country from neighboring Iran.
On Sunday, December 10, the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq called for a halt to military offensives, especially in predominantly Sunni areas, to ensure the smooth running of legislative elections, one day after it came under a scathing criticism from Sunni leaders. Former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath party are now urging Sunnis to vote in Thursday's poll and warning al-Qaida fighters not to launch attacks. "Former Baathists opposed to the US presence in Iraq, such as Falluja resident Jassim Abu Bakr, are still fiercely opposed to US-backed leaders, and say any Sunni politicians who move too close to them will lose their support."

The highest spiritual authority for Iraqi Shiites, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani of Najaf, has urged Iraqis to participate in the elections. In a communique issued by his office, Sistani added, "These elections are just as important as the preceding ones, and citizens--both male and female-- must participate in them on a wide scale in order to guarantee a big and powerful presence for those who will safeguard their verities and work energetically for their higher interests in the next parliament." He also warned them against splitting or wasting their vote, essentially endorsing the United Iraqi Alliance, which contains most of the religious Shiite candidates. More

Salam Pax reports: "I have to admit, it is pretty confusing. We Iraqis went from absolutely no elections for 30 years to having to vote three times within an eleven-month period. I tell you, we’re exhausted. ... On the street there doesn’t seem to be much interest in the elections either. You just don’t feel the spark. Last year newspapers dedicated large sections to debating democracy and the elections. Television stations had endless programmes about the same issues. It was all so exciting. These days the Iraqi media is a bit more distracted - torture allegations at the ministry of interior and a big meeting in Cairo - and the people are just plain tired of listening to the same promises all over again. Within a year we've gone from being excited to cynical. A note for future “democracy advancing projects” around the world: fast-tracking democracy means you also fast-track political apathy."
The World Socialist Website reports: "Predictably, the Bush administration has told the American people that the elections in Iraq tomorrow will be a democratic milestone for both the country and the broader Middle East. The truth is that they will only produce greater conflict between the country’s main religious and ethnic groups, intensified social and class tensions and greater hostility among the Iraqi people toward the US-led occupation forces."
Riverbend reports on Baghdad Burning: "We’ve been flooded with election propaganda this last week. Every Iraqi channel you turn to is showing one candidate or another. Allawi, Hakim and a handful of others dominate the rest though. No one is bothering much with the other lists because quite frankly, no one hears of them that often. Allawi’s face is everywhere, as is Hakim’s turbaned head. It’s disconcerting to scan a seemingly innocent wall and have a row of identical Hakims smiling tightly down on you.... The last press conference I watched of Hakim was a few days ago. He was warning his followers of electoral fraud, which is slightly ironic considering his group has been accused of all sorts of fraud this last year. The audience was what caught my interest. The women were sitting on one side of the audience and the men were sitting on the other side, the sexes separated by a narrow aisle. The women all wore black abbayas and headscarves. It could have been a scene out of Teheran."

Early voting begins in Iraq | Mosul Blanketed in Sunni Banners Ahead of Polls | Vote could unite or fragment Iraq | Emigrants vote in Iraq elections | Iraqis Gear Up for Elections | Four more US soldiers killed as Iraq edges towards elections | Iraq shuts down for Thursday's vote | Kirkuk a Key Election Issue for Kurds