History > 2012 > USA > International > Iraq (I)

Blasts Kill 26 in Iraq’s Disputed Areas

December 17, 2012

The New York Times

By REUTERS

KIRKUK, Iraq (Reuters) - Bombers and gunmen killed at least 26 people in attacks mostly in northern Iraqi towns and villages on Monday in the second consecutive day of violence in areas at the center of a bitter feud between Baghdad and autonomous Kurdistan.

The ethnically mixed "Disputed Territories" - the swathe of land marking Iraq from the area administered by Kurds in the north - have been a potential flashpoint for conflict since the buffer of the last American troops left a year ago.

Two blasts hit a Shi'ite district in Tuz Khurmato, killing at least five and wounding 24 and a truck bomb killed seven in a Shabak minority area near Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of the capital, security and local officials said.

"The bombers are trying to stir tensions, but we are telling them we will be more unified by these attacks," Tuz Khurmato Mayor Shalal Abdul told Reuters. "Those who were killed here include three children and an elderly man."

No armed group claimed responsibility for Monday's attacks, but the explosions came at a time of heightened tensions between the Arab-led central government in Baghdad and ethnic Kurds over contested land and oil rights.

One person was killed and five were wounded in four blasts around the religiously mixed city of Baquba in Diyala province, where areas neighboring Kurdistan are disputed, police said.

A string of attacks, mortar rounds and bombs killed more than a dozen more in other areas in Iraq.

Last month, Baghdad and Kurdistan sent troops and tanks from their respective armies to reinforce positions around towns in the contested territories, escalating tensions in their long-running dispute, especially over Kirkuk.

 

MILITARY STANDOFF

Neither Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki nor Kurdistan President Masoud Barzani stand to benefit from letting the standoff slide into conflict, but they may try to use troop movements to shore up support with their constituents, diplomats and analysts say.

Iraqi troops and Kurdish Peshmerga forces have faced off in the past only to step back before any major confrontation. U.S. officials helped ease tensions earlier this year when the two armies faced off near the Syrian border.

Another 11 people were killed in attacks in the ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk on Sunday, authorities said.

Kirkuk sits outside the three northern provinces administered by Kurdistan, but ethnic Kurds lay historical claim to the city and say it should be part of the Kurdish region. The city's Turkmen minority also claim historical rights there.

A referendum to decide if Kurds are the dominant ethnicity, which would strengthen their claim to Kirkuk and its oil riches, has been repeatedly delayed.

Kurds say Iraq's former Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein "Arabised" Kirkuk by moving Arabs there in the 1980s and 1990s.

Kurdistan has run its own government and armed forces since 1991 and is more secure and stable than other parts of Iraq, but it still relies on the central government for a 17 percent share of the national budget and for pipelines to export its oil.

But the Kurdish region increasingly has clashed with Baghdad after signing oil agreements with companies like Exxon Mobil and Chevron to develop its own oilfields, deals the central government dismisses as unconstitutional.

(Reporting by Aseel Kami in Baghdad; Writing by Patrick Markey;

Editing by Michael Roddy)

    Blasts Kill 26 in Iraq’s Disputed Areas, NYT, 17.12.2012,
    http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2012/12/17/world/middleeast/17reuters-iraq-violence.html

Death Sentence for a Top Iraqi Leader

in a Day of Bloodshed

September 9, 2012
The New York Times
By OMAR AL-JAWOSHY and MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ

BAGHDAD — The vice president of Iraq, a prominent Sunni Muslim, was convicted of murder and sentenced to death on Sunday in a trial conducted in absentia. The verdict coincided with a wave of bombings and insurgent attacks that claimed at least 100 lives, making Sunday one of the bloodiest days in Iraq since American troops withdrew last year.

Together, the verdict and the violence threatened to deepen an already intractable political crisis among the country’s ruling factions.

Sunni leaders who support the vice president, Tariq al-Hashimi, responded angrily to the court’s action, accusing the Shiite-led government of trying to sideline them from a power-sharing arrangement meant to guard against the sectarian violence that continues to plague the country.

Attacks were reported in at least 10 Iraqi cities on Sunday, including Shiite neighborhoods of Baghdad, where two markets, a restaurant and a crowded square were struck, capped by a car bomb that exploded late in the evening in Sadr City, a Shiite stronghold in the capital. The attacks underscored the increasing potency of insurgent groups in Iraq, which appear to have blossomed amid the political paralysis that followed the American departure. Their attacks have tended to come in coordinated waves across the country, including the attacks by Sunni extremists on July 23 that killed about 107 people and appeared to reflect a spillover of sectarian strife from neighboring Syria, and the car and roadside bombings of Aug. 16 that killed about 100, including dozens at an amusement park in eastern Baghdad.

Earlier this summer, the country seemed to be moving toward a sense of normalcy, with an easing of checkpoints in the capital, new buses going into service and women returning to local cinemas. But the mounting insurgent violence has prompted the government to reimpose security measures and has revived a sense of siege in the cities.

In February, a panel of judges accused Mr. Hashimi of overseeing paramilitary death squads that were responsible for carrying out more than 150 attacks on political opponents, security officials and religious pilgrims over a period of six years. Mr. Hashimi has denied the charges, calling them part of a witch hunt against political opponents of Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, a Shiite. When an arrest warrant was issued for Mr. Hashimi, he fled Iraq for Turkey, and remained there while the trial went ahead without him.

The verdict handed down on Sunday did not address the death-squad charges directly but focused narrowly on the deaths of two people, a lawyer and a security official. Mr. Hashimi and his son-in-law were convicted of murder in both killings.

Mr. Hashimi was not immediately available for comment on Sunday. His office issued a statement saying he would address the matter at a news conference in Turkey on Monday.

As expected, other Sunni leaders reacted angrily to the sentence.

“The whole thing from the beginning was a conspiracy against the Sunnis,” said Sheikh Talal Hussain al-Mutar, the head of one of Iraq’s main Sunni tribes. “The whole investigation and courts were fake and controlled by the government. This will make the situation in Iraq worse.”

Shiite leaders, on the other hand, welcomed the verdict and defended the court. Ali al-Alak, a leader of the Shiite-dominated Dawa party and a close aide to Mr. Maliki, dismissed accusations of a conspiracy, noting that the nine-judge panel that sentenced Mr. Hashimi included representatives from all factions. He called on Sunni lawmakers to sever ties with Mr. Hashimi.

“The sentence is a victory for all Iraqis and a victory for justice,” Mr. Alak said. “Why are they trying to defend him? What are they planning for?”

Opposition lawmakers have been assailing Mr. Maliki’s government for months. Sunni Arab and Kurdish officials have accused Mr. Maliki of trying to monopolize power, and they have been attempting to force him from office through a vote of no confidence.

The factional infighting has led to a near collapse of political dialogue, raising fears that gaps in the government’s control could once again be filled by insurgents.

No one immediately took responsibility for Sunday’s bloodshed, which capped a summer of deadly violence. Lately, Al Qaeda in Iraq, the mainly Sunni insurgent group, has claimed responsibility for most high-profile attacks. The group recently announced on a jihadi Web site that it would attempt to reassert control over Sunni regions in the country.

Initially, the attacks on Sunday appeared to be aimed mainly at military and law-enforcement targets. The violence began just before dawn, when militant fighters stormed an army outpost in Dujail, a town about 35 miles north of Baghdad, officials said. At least 10 soldiers were killed and eight were wounded.

A series of explosions in Kirkuk, about 150 miles north of Baghdad, claimed at least 19 lives, and included a suicide car bombing outside a building where people had gathered to apply for security jobs at the government-run North Oil Company.

“We arrived early this morning to apply for jobs protecting Iraq’s oil,” said Sagban Nuri, 18, who was wounded in the abdomen. “A huge explosion took us by surprise. The bodies of my friends and relatives were blown away in front of my eyes,” he said.

In Nasiriya in southern Iraq, a French consulate was the target of a car bomb that killed two Iraqi security guards, and another bombing in the city killed two civilians. Attacks were also carried out in Samarra, Basra, Amara and Mosul, among other cities.

Omar al-Jawoshy reported from Baghdad, and Michael Schwirtz from New York.

Duraid Adnan contributed reporting from Baghdad.

    Death Sentence for a Top Iraqi Leader in a Day of Bloodshed, NYT, 9.9.2012,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/10/world/middleeast/insurgents-carry-out-wave-of-attacks-across-iraq.html

Suicides Outpacing War Deaths for Troops

June 8, 2012
The New York Times
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS

The suicide rate among the nation’s active-duty military personnel has spiked this year, eclipsing the number of troops dying in battle and on pace to set a record annual high since the start of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan more than a decade ago, the Pentagon said Friday.

Suicides have increased even as the United States military has withdrawn from Iraq and stepped up efforts to provide mental health, drug and alcohol, and financial counseling services.

The military said Friday that there had been 154 suicides among active-duty troops through Thursday, a rate of nearly one each day this year. The figures were first reported this week by The Associated Press.

That number represents an 18 percent increase over the 130 active-duty military suicides for the same period in 2011. There were 123 suicides from January to early June in 2010, and 133 during that period in 2009, the Pentagon said.

By contrast, there were 124 American military fatalities in Afghanistan as of June 1 this year, according to the Pentagon.

Suicide rates of military personnel and combat veterans have risen sharply since 2005, as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan intensified. Recently, the Pentagon established a Defense Suicide Prevention Office.

On Friday, Cynthia Smith, a Defense Department spokeswoman, said the Pentagon had sought to remind commanders that those who seek counseling should not be stigmatized.

“This is a troubling issue, and we are committed to getting our service members the help they need,” she said. “I want to emphasize that getting help is not a sign of weakness; it is a sign of strength.”

In a letter to military commanders last month, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said that “suicide prevention is a leadership responsibility,” and added, “Commanders and supervisors cannot tolerate any actions that belittle, haze, humiliate or ostracize any individual, especially those who require or are responsibly seeking professional services.”

But veterans’ groups said Friday that the Pentagon had not done enough to moderate the tremendous stress under which combat troops live, including coping with multiple deployments.

“It is clear that the military, at the level of the platoon, the company and the battalion, that these things are not being addressed on a compassionate and understanding basis,” said Bruce Parry, chairman of the Coalition of Veterans Organizations, a group based in Illinois. “They need to understand on a much deeper level the trauma the troops are facing.”

Paul Rieckhoff, executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, called suicides among active-duty military personnel “the tip of the iceberg.” He cited a survey the group conducted this year among its 160,000 members that found that 37 percent knew someone who had committed suicide.

Mr. Rieckhoff attributed the rise in military suicides to too few qualified mental health professionals, aggravated by the stigma of receiving counseling and further compounded by family stresses and financial problems. The unemployment rate among military families is a particular problem, he said.

“They are thinking about combat, yeah, but they are also thinking about their wives and kids back home,” he said.

Thom Shanker contributed reporting.

    Suicides Outpacing War Deaths for Troops, NYT, 8.6.2012,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/09/us/suicides-eclipse-war-deaths-for-us-troops.html

Veterans and Brain Disease

April 25, 2012
The New York Times
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

He was a 27-year-old former Marine, struggling to adjust to civilian life after two tours in Iraq. Once an A student, he now found himself unable to remember conversations, dates and routine bits of daily life. He became irritable, snapped at his children and withdrew from his family. He and his wife began divorce proceedings.

This young man took to alcohol, and a drunken car crash cost him his driver’s license. The Department of Veterans Affairs diagnosed him with post-traumatic stress disorder, or P.T.S.D. When his parents hadn’t heard from him in two days, they asked the police to check on him. The officers found his body; he had hanged himself with a belt.

That story is devastatingly common, but the autopsy of this young man’s brain may have been historic. It revealed something startling that may shed light on the epidemic of suicides and other troubles experienced by veterans of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

His brain had been physically changed by a disease called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or C.T.E. That’s a degenerative condition best-known for affecting boxers, football players and other athletes who endure repeated blows to the head.

In people with C.T.E., an abnormal form of a protein accumulates and eventually destroys cells throughout the brain, including the frontal and temporal lobes. Those are areas that regulate impulse control, judgment, multitasking, memory and emotions.

That Marine was the first Iraq veteran found to have C.T.E., but experts have since autopsied a dozen or more other veterans’ brains and have repeatedly found C.T.E. The findings raise a critical question: Could blasts from bombs or grenades have a catastrophic impact similar to those of repeated concussions in sports, and could the rash of suicides among young veterans be a result?

“P.T.S.D. in a high-risk cohort like war veterans could actually be a physical disease from permanent brain damage, not a psychological disease,” said Bennet Omalu, the neuropathologist who examined the veteran. Dr. Omalu published an article about the 27-year-old veteran as a sentinel case in Neurosurgical Focus, a peer-reviewed medical journal.

The discovery of C.T.E. in veterans could be stunningly important. Sadly, it could also suggest that the worst is yet to come, for C.T.E. typically develops in midlife, decades after exposure. If we are seeing C.T.E. now in war veterans, we may see much more in the coming years.

So far, just this one case of a veteran with C.T.E. has been published in a peer-reviewed medical journal. But at least three groups of scientists are now conducting brain autopsies on veterans, and they have found C.T.E. again and again, experts tell me. Publication of this research is in the works.

The finding of C.T.E. may help answer a puzzle. Returning Vietnam veterans did not have sharply elevated suicide rates as Iraq and Afghan veterans do today. One obvious difference is that Afghan and Iraq veterans are much more likely to have been exposed to blasts, whose shock waves send the brain crashing into the skull.

“Imagine a squishy, gelatinous material, surrounded by fluid, and then surrounded by a hard skull,” explained Robert A. Stern, a C.T.E. expert at Boston University School of Medicine. “The brain is going to move, jiggle around inside the skull. A helmet cannot do anything about that.”

Dr. Stern emphasized that the study of C.T.E. is still in its infancy. But he said that his hunch is that C.T.E. accounts for a share — he has no idea how large — of veteran suicides. C.T.E. leads to a degenerative loss of memory and thinking ability and, eventually, to dementia. There is also often a pattern of depression, impulsiveness and, all too often, suicide. There is now no treatment, or even a way of diagnosing C.T.E. other than examining the brain after death.

While the sports industry has lagged in responding to the discovery of C.T.E., and still does not adequately protect athletes from repeated concussions, the military has been far more proactive. The Defense Department has formed its own unit to autopsy brains and study whether blasts may be causing C.T.E.

Frankly, I was hesitant to write this column. Some veterans and their families are at wit’s end. If the problem in some cases is a degenerative physical ailment, currently incurable and fated to get worse, do they want to know?

I called Cheryl DeBow, a mother I wrote about recently. She sent two strong, healthy sons to Iraq. One committed suicide, and the other is struggling. DeBow said that it would actually be comforting to know that there might be an underlying physical ailment, even if it is progressive.

“You’re dealing with a ghost when it’s P.T.S.D.,” she told me a couple of days ago. “Everything changes when it’s something physical. People are more understanding. It’s a relief to the veterans and to the family. And, anyway, we want to know.”

    Veterans and Brain Disease, NYT, 25.4.2012,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/26/opinion/kristof-veterans-and-brain-disease.html

Veterans Department to Increase Mental Health Staffing

April 19, 2012
The New York Times
By JAMES DAO

The Department of Veterans Affairs will announce on Thursday that it plans to hire about 1,600 additional psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers and other mental health clinicians in an effort to reduce long wait times for services at many veterans medical centers.

The hiring, which would be augmented by the addition of 300 clerical workers, would increase the department’s mental health staff by nearly 10 percent at a time when the veterans health system is being overwhelmed not just by veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, but also by aging veterans from the Vietnam era.

“History shows that the costs of war will continue to grow for a decade or more after the operational missions in Iraq and Afghanistan have ended,” Eric K. Shinseki, the secretary of veterans affairs, said in a statement to be released Thursday. “As more veterans return home, we must ensure that all veterans have access to quality mental health care.”

The announcement comes as the department is facing intensified criticism for delays in providing psychological services to veterans at some of its major medical centers.

The department’s own inspector general is expected to release a report as soon as next week asserting that wait times for mental health services are significantly longer than the department has been willing to acknowledge.

Senator Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat who is chairwoman of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, has also scheduled hearings next week about the delays.

And last year, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, based in San Francisco, issued a scathing ruling saying that the department had failed to provide adequate mental health services to veterans.

“No more veterans should be compelled to agonize or perish while the government fails to perform its obligation,” Judge Stephen Reinhardt wrote for the majority. The Obama administration has appealed the ruling.

The veterans department says that it has worked hard to keep pace with the tide of new veterans needing psychological care, increasing its mental health care budget by 39 percent since 2009 and hiring more than 3,500 mental health professionals.

The department says it has also established a policy to do mental health evaluations of all veterans not in crisis within 14 days, a goal it says it meets 95 percent of the time.

However, the inspector general’s report is expected to question the validity of that claim.

One issue confronting the department has been finding enough mental health clinicians to fill job openings, particularly in rural areas. The director of veterans health care in Montana recently was reassigned, for instance, amid complaints that she had been unable to hire psychiatrists to staff a new psychiatric unit.

But department officials said they were confident that they would be able to find qualified mental health clinicians in most regions. Funds for the new jobs will be allocated out of the current department budget, the officials said, and clinicians will be added to all 21 of the department’s service networks.

The vast majority of the new hires, about 1,400, will be patient care providers. But the department also plans to hire more than 100 people for a crisis hot line as well as 100 examiners to review disability compensation and pension claims.

That disability compensation system is struggling with a growing backlog, with nearly 900,000 veterans currently waiting for decisions on their claims.

    Veterans Department to Increase Mental Health Staffing, NYT, 19.4.2012,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/19/us/veterans-affairs-dept-to-increase-mental-health-staffing.html

A Veteran’s Death, the Nation’s Shame

April 14, 2012
The New York Times
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

HERE’S a window into a tragedy within the American military: For every soldier killed on the battlefield this year, about 25 veterans are dying by their own hands.

An American soldier dies every day and a half, on average, in Iraq or Afghanistan. Veterans kill themselves at a rate of one every 80 minutes. More than 6,500 veteran suicides are logged every year — more than the total number of soldiers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq combined since those wars began.

These unnoticed killing fields are places like New Middletown, Ohio, where Cheryl DeBow raised two sons, Michael and Ryan Yurchison, and saw them depart for Iraq. Michael, then 22, signed up soon after the 9/11 attacks.

“I can’t just sit back and do nothing,” he told his mom. Two years later, Ryan followed his beloved older brother to the Army.

When Michael was discharged, DeBow picked him up at the airport — and was staggered. “When he got off the plane and I picked him up, it was like he was an empty shell,” she told me. “His body was shaking.” Michael began drinking and abusing drugs, his mother says, and he terrified her by buying the same kind of gun he had carried in Iraq. “He said he slept with his gun over there, and he needed it here,” she recalls.

Then Ryan returned home in 2007, and he too began to show signs of severe strain. He couldn’t sleep, abused drugs and alcohol, and suffered extreme jitters.

“He was so anxious, he couldn’t stand to sit next to you and hear you breathe,” DeBow remembers. A talented filmmaker, Ryan turned the lens on himself to record heartbreaking video of his own sleeplessness, his own irrational behavior — even his own mock suicide.

One reason for veteran suicides (and crimes, which get far more attention) may be post-traumatic stress disorder, along with a related condition, traumatic brain injury. Ryan suffered a concussion in an explosion in Iraq, and Michael finally had traumatic brain injury diagnosed two months ago.

Estimates of post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury vary widely, but a ballpark figure is that the problems afflict at least one in five veterans from Afghanistan and Iraq. One study found that by their third or fourth tours in Iraq or Afghanistan, more than one-quarter of soldiers had such mental health problems.

Preliminary figures suggest that being a veteran now roughly doubles one’s risk of suicide. For young men ages 17 to 24, being a veteran almost quadruples the risk of suicide, according to a study in The American Journal of Public Health.

Michael and Ryan, like so many other veterans, sought help from the Department of Veterans Affairs. Eric Shinseki, the secretary of veterans affairs, declined to speak to me, but the most common view among those I interviewed was that the V.A. has improved but still doesn’t do nearly enough about the suicide problem.

“It’s an epidemic that is not being addressed fully,” said Bob Filner, a Democratic congressman from San Diego and the senior Democrat on the House Veterans Affairs Committee. “We could be doing so much more.”

To its credit, the V.A. has established a suicide hotline and appointed suicide-prevention coordinators. It is also chipping away at a warrior culture in which mental health concerns are considered sissy. Still, veterans routinely slip through the cracks. Last year, the United States Court of Appeals in San Francisco excoriated the V.A. for “unchecked incompetence” in dealing with veterans’ mental health.

Patrick Bellon, head of Veterans for Common Sense, which filed the suit in that case, says the V.A. has genuinely improved but is still struggling. “There are going to be one million new veterans in the next five years,” he said. “They’re already having trouble coping with the population they have now, so I don’t know what they’re going to do.”

Last month, the V.A.’s own inspector general reported on a 26-year-old veteran who was found wandering naked through traffic in California. The police tried to get care for him, but a V.A. hospital reportedly said it couldn’t accept him until morning. The young man didn’t go in, and after a series of other missed opportunities to get treatment, he stepped in front of a train and killed himself.

Likewise, neither Michael nor Ryan received much help from V.A. hospitals. In early 2010, Ryan began to talk more about suicide, and DeBow rushed him to emergency rooms and pleaded with the V.A. for help. She says she was told that an inpatient treatment program had a six-month waiting list. (The V.A. says it has no record of a request for hospitalization for Ryan.)

“Ryan was hurting, saying he was going to end it all, stuff like that,” recalls his best friend, Steve Schaeffer, who served with him in Iraq and says he has likewise struggled with the V.A. to get mental health services. “Getting an appointment is like pulling teeth,” he said. “You get an appointment in six weeks when you need it today.”

While Ryan was waiting for a spot in the addiction program, in May 2010, he died of a drug overdose. It was listed as an accidental death, but family and friends are convinced it was suicide.

The heartbreak of Ryan’s death added to his brother’s despair, but DeBow says Michael is now making slow progress. “He is able to get out of bed most mornings,” she told me. “That is a huge improvement.” Michael asked not to be interviewed: he wants to look forward, not back.

As for DeBow, every day is a struggle. She sent two strong, healthy men to serve her country, and now her family has been hollowed in ways that aren’t as tidy, as honored, or as easy to explain as when the battle wounds are physical. I wanted to make sure that her family would be comfortable with the spotlight this article would bring, so I asked her why she was speaking out.

“When Ryan joined the Army, he was willing to sacrifice his life for his country,” she said. “And he did, just in a different way, without the glory. He would want it this way.”

“My home has been a nightmare,” DeBow added through tears, recounting how three of Ryan’s friends in the military have killed themselves since their return. “You hear my story, but it’s happening everywhere.”

We refurbish tanks after time in combat, but don’t much help men and women exorcise the demons of war. Presidents commit troops to distant battlefields, but don’t commit enough dollars to veterans’ services afterward. We enlist soldiers to protect us, but when they come home we don’t protect them.

“Things need to change,” DeBow said, and her voice broke as she added: “These are guys who went through so much. If anybody deserves help, it’s them.”

    A Veteran’s Death, the Nation’s Shame, NYT, 14.4.2012,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/15/opinion/sunday/kristof-a-veterans-death-the-nations-shame.html

New Tensions Arise as Iraq’s Displaced Return Home

March 24, 2012
The New York Times
By JACK HEALY and YASIR GHAZI

BAGHDAD — Even after death squads began killing his neighbors, after corpses appeared in the streets around his home and his family fled in fear, Walid al-Bahadli still believed in his once affluent and diverse neighborhood of Al Adel.

A Shiite Muslim, he had grown up there during the 1960s, when Sunnis and Shiites lived side by side in palm-shaded mansions. He vowed after he and his family moved away to safety that the family would return.

But as the Bahadlis have discovered, along with hundreds of thousands of Iraqis now seeking to go back to areas they fled during the bad times, going home again is never as simple as it seems. Instead, they find themselves perched along the next front in Iraq’s seemingly unending turmoil: the battle of return.

Across the country, near-record numbers of displaced families are pouring back, but instead of kindling a much-needed reconciliation they are in some cases reviving the resentments and suspicions created by bloody purges that carved Iraq into archipelagos of Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds after the American-led 2003 invasion.

In places like Al Adel, some Shiite families view the Sunni families who stayed behind as complicit partners of the violent Sunni militants who overran many mixed neighborhoods. But many Sunni families say they now feel like they are being hounded by returning Shiites who, for the first time in centuries, have the force of the government and army at their backs.

In 2011, the number of returnees to Iraq soared by 120 percent from a year earlier, to 260,690, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. They were drawn back by improving security and larger government payments to Iraqis registering as returnees. It was the most since 2004, when the fall of Saddam Hussein opened the gates for thousands who had fled his brutality, forced relocations and a decade of crushing sanctions.

As they continue to come home, they will test whether Iraq can move beyond a sectarian prism that distorts its politics and undercuts its security. It is a struggle that will play out in future years not just in politics and government, but in scarred, segregated neighborhoods like Al Adel.

And if the story of the Bahadli family and their neighborhood is any guide, it will be a return layered with friendship and forgiveness, but also distrust. And one stained with blood.

In Arabic, Al Adel means justice. After the 2003 invasion, it became a base camp for Sunni insurgents in western Baghdad. They carried out torture in seized houses and battled Shiite militias who had control of a nearby neighborhood. Nearly every Shiite family moved away, and residents estimated that 300 people were killed in a neighborhood of about 1,500 to 2,000 families.

Today, Al Adel blooms with loud markers of the Shiites’ return and ascent. Along the main streets fly black, green and red flags of Shiite mourning and martyrdom. The faces of Shiite clerics, living and dead, stare down from billboards. A new mosque for followers of the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr has opened.

For Shiite Muslims who have returned over the past few years, these are footholds of identity. But Sunnis say they get the message: it is religious Shiites who now hold sway from Al Adel to the office of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. “They see us as a threat,” said Mohammed al-Ani, 35, a Sunni government worker. “They are putting us through the same things that the Shiites suffered. Now, as a Sunni, I am afraid when I am home. I keep thinking that they will come and arrest me.”

They grumble about being harassed at the two checkpoints leading into the neighborhood, and they say that the soldiers who wave Shiite residents through demand identification of the Sunnis. Every few weeks, Sunni residents say, their houses are raided by soldiers loyal to Mr. Maliki.

“For nothing,” said one resident who asked to be identified by the nickname Abu Sama, a Sunni who has lived in Al Adel since the late 1960s and whose house has been raided several times.

Abu Sama lives next door to an old Shiite friend. They call each other brothers. But in private, Abu Sama seethes with a bitter sense of disenfranchisement that now sears the Sunni heartlands of Iraq, from the river valleys of Diyala to the deserts of western Anbar to the irrigated central plains of Salahuddin. He sees conspiracies against the neighborhood’s Sunnis in the home searches and the periodic arrests of scores of Sunnis over the latest terrorism plots. “I am a stranger in my neighborhood,” he said.

But the suspicions have two sides.

Inside Al Rabia market, shoppers from all sects and political backgrounds jostle for the same honeyed sesame candies, dried dates and plates of roasted lamb. The market’s Shiite owner, Saad Hamid Majid, has deep ties to both the Sunni and Shiite communities in Al Adel. But he admits he is still wary of his neighbors who stayed behind when he and other Shiite families fled.

Many Sunni families watched over houses vacated by their Shiite neighbors, but Mr. Majid believes others invited squatters and became the eyes of Sunni militants, passing along information about their Shiite neighbors.

“We told the Sunnis that we are brothers and can live together,” he said. “But they are not happy we’re coming back. You can see that in their eyes.”

In 2008, after three years of displacement, Mr. Bahadli and his family moved home. Their house was a wreck, but an ebb in the violence gave them space to rebuild. The family bought new couches and furniture for the parlor, and new birds to sing in backyard cages.

Mr. Bahadli took on a role as the neighborhood’s mayor, his family said. He wrangled garbage collectors. He paid grocery bills for widows. He mediated countless arguments while sipping glasses of syrupy black tea. The family reopened their ice cream shop.

“We were cautious at first,” said Mr. Bahadli’s brother Riyadh. “We took measures to protect ourselves. We all went out together. But day after day, we started to feel safe.”

More than anyone else, Mr. Bahadli felt as if he had reclaimed Al Adel, his family said. “He felt like the neighborhood was guarding him,” his brother Alaa said. “Like it all loved him.”

But on Jan. 17, Mr. Bahadli was coming home from the ice cream shop with his daughter and 2-year-old grandson when two men confronted them at their front gates. They drew their guns and fired. Mr. Bahadli and his grandson were both killed. His daughter survived, wounded by a bullet that passed through her hand and struck her son’s skull. Two Sunni men from the neighborhood were arrested in the shooting, but the Iraqi police would not identify them or make them available for an interview. Mr. Bahadli’s family members said they believed he was killed because he was one of Al Adel’s most prominent Shiites. “Killing him was a big achievement,” said his brother Riyadh.

A few days after his funeral, a crowd of Sunni and Shiite residents, tribal sheiks and neighborhood leaders gathered at the family’s door and urged them not to leave. They promised to look out for the family.

The family stayed, but they now live in terror. Mr. Bahadli’s mother weeps and implores her other sons to move away again. Recently, a car circled the block two times and the family suspected it was the prelude to another attack.

And a pall has fallen over much of Al Adel. Friendly Sunni residents mourn Mr. Bahadli’s death while worrying it will bring reprisals on their heads. And some Shiites, like Mithaq Sadia, a young mother, have steeled themselves for another sectarian conflict.

“This time,” she said, “we will make them feel fear.”

    New Tensions Arise as Iraq’s Displaced Return Home, NYT, 24.3.2012,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/world/middleeast/as-the-displaced-return-to-iraq-new-tensions-arise.html

G.I.’s Remains Are Recovered From Iraq

February 26, 2012
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

BAGHDAD (AP) — The American military announced Sunday that it had recovered the remains of the last American service member who had been unaccounted for in Iraq, an Army interpreter seized by gunmen after he sneaked off his base to visit his Iraqi wife in Baghdad during the height of the insurgency.

The remains of the soldier, Staff Sgt. Ahmed Al-Taie, who was a 41-year-old specialist when militiamen seized him on Oct. 23, 2006, were positively identified at the military’s mortuary in Dover, Del., the Army said in a statement released Sunday. Army officials said they had no further details about the circumstances of his death or the discovery of his remains.

The American Embassy in Baghdad did not respond to a request for comment late Sunday.

Family members say that like many Iraqi exiles, Sergeant Al-Taie was eager to help his native land rebuild after the American-led invasion in 2003. The family had settled in Ann Arbor, Mich., after leaving Iraq when Ahmed was a teenager.

He met his wife during a trip to Iraq shortly after Saddam Hussein was ousted, while he was still a civilian, and in December 2004 he joined an Army Reserve program for native speakers of Arabic. He was deployed to Iraq in November 2005 and worked with a provincial reconstruction team in Baghdad until he was kidnapped the following year.

At the time he was seized, kidnappings for ransom or political motives, mostly of Iraqis but also many foreigners, were common.

Sergeant Al-Taie’s in-laws said that he often met secretly with his wife at her family’s home, despite warnings that he was in danger of being kidnapped.

It was during one of those visits that he disappeared. Masked gunmen hiding in an abandoned building seized him as he went to find his wife at her uncle’s house, less than two blocks away, according to witnesses.

The American military immediately began a large-scale search, locking down parts of Baghdad.

Within days, the military had arrested four of the kidnappers. But by then, Sergeant Al-Taie had been handed off to another group and transported to the Shiite heartland of southern Iraq, according to people familiar with the case.

He was last seen four months after his abduction in a video posted on the Internet by a Shiite militant faction called the Ahl al-Bayt Brigades.

Sergeant Al-Taie was the last American service member unaccounted for, but several civilians, including Americans who were participating in the efforts to rebuild Iraq, are still missing.

    G.I.’s Remains Are Recovered From Iraq, NYT, 26.2.2012,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/27/world/middleeast/american-soldiers-remains-are-recovered-from-iraq.html

Deadly Car Bombings Strike Across Baghdad

February 23, 2012
The New York Times
By JACK HEALY

BAGHDAD — At least 22 people across Iraq’s capital were killed on Thursday in a series of apparently coordinated car bombings and small-arms attacks that transformed the morning commute into a landscape of carnage. Dozens were wounded, Interior Ministry officials said.

The bulk of the attacks seemed to be aimed at the roadside checkpoints where police officers and soldiers check drivers’ identification cards and sometimes search cars. The ubiquitous checkpoints, which security forces routinely decorate with fabric flowers and emblems of religious pride, are almost daily targets of violence.

Security forces blocked off roads throughout Baghdad, and the wounded were rushed to nearby hospitals. In streets scored with smoke and littered with the burnt-out wreckage of detonated cars, witnesses described scenes of panic and chaos with “fire everywhere,” according to one.

Weeks after American combat forces withdrew from Iraq in mid-December, violence flared elsewhere in Iraq on Thursday morning as suicide bombers and gunmen struck security forces and government targets to the north and south of the capital, local security officials said.

Four people were killed in Salahuddin Province, immediately north of the capital, by car bombs that struck at a local court, a Shiite enclave within the heavily Sunni Muslim province, a local police station and the local headquarters of a Kurdish political party.

Security officials in the province set up temporary checkpoints and imposed a curfew in Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s hometown.

Three explosions also ripped through Babel Province, a heavily Shiite area south of Baghdad, killing one person and wounding about 20 more. One of the attacks was aimed at police officers while civilians bore the brunt of the other explosions.

The day’s attacks, along with a recent suicide car bombing outside Baghdad’s police academy, have punctured a period of relative calm in the country in which violence has dwindled to near its lowest levels since the American invasion in 2003. There were no immediate claims of responsibility, though the coordinated nature of the bombings was similar to previous attacks by Al Qaeda in Iraq, a Sunni insurgent group.

Zaid Thaker contributed reporting from Baghdad

and Iraqi employees of The New York Times from Babel and Salahuddin provinces.

    Deadly Car Bombings Strike Across Baghdad, NYT, 23.2.2012,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/24/world/middleeast/baghdad-car-bombings-kill-dozens.html

U.S. Drones Patrolling Its Skies Provoke Outrage in Iraq

January 29, 2012
The New York Times
By ERIC SCHMITT and MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT

BAGHDAD — A month after the last American troops left Iraq, the State Department is operating a small fleet of surveillance drones here to help protect the United States Embassy and consulates, as well as American personnel. Some senior Iraqi officials expressed outrage at the program, saying the unarmed aircraft are an affront to Iraqi sovereignty.

The program was described by the department’s diplomatic security branch in a little-noticed section of its most recent annual report and outlined in broad terms in a two-page online prospectus for companies that might bid on a contract to manage the program. It foreshadows a possible expansion of unmanned drone operations into the diplomatic arm of the American government; until now they have been mainly the province of the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency.

American contractors say they have been told that the State Department is considering to field unarmed surveillance drones in the future in a handful of other potentially “high-threat” countries, including Indonesia and Pakistan, and in Afghanistan after the bulk of American troops leave in the next two years. State Department officials say that no decisions have been made beyond the drone operations in Iraq.

The drones are the latest example of the State Department’s efforts to take over functions in Iraq that the military used to perform. Some 5,000 private security contractors now protect the embassy’s 11,000-person staff, for example, and typically drive around in heavily armored military vehicles.

When embassy personnel move throughout the country, small helicopters buzz over the convoys to provide support in case of an attack. Often, two contractors armed with machine guns are tethered to the outside of the helicopters. The State Department began operating some drones in Iraq last year on a trial basis, and stepped up their use after the last American troops left Iraq in December, taking the military drones with them.

The United States, which will soon begin taking bids to manage drone operations in Iraq over the next five years, needs formal approval from the Iraqi government to use such aircraft here, Iraqi officials said. Such approval may be untenable given the political tensions between the two countries. Now that the troops are gone, Iraqi politicians often denounce the United States in an effort to rally support from their followers.

A senior American official said that negotiations were under way to obtain authorization for the current drone operations, but Ali al-Mosawi, a top adviser to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki; Iraq’s national security adviser, Falih al-Fayadh; and the acting minister of interior, Adnan al-Asadi, all said in interviews that they had not been consulted by the Americans.

Mr. Asadi said that he opposed the drone program: “Our sky is our sky, not the U.S.A.’s sky.”

The Pentagon and C.I.A. have been stepping up their use of armed Predator and Reaper drones to conduct strikes against militants in places like Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. More recently, the United States has expanded drone bases in Ethiopia, the Seychelles and a secret location in the Arabian Peninsula.

The State Department drones, by contrast, carry no weapons and are meant to provide data and images of possible hazards, like public protests or roadblocks, to security personnel on the ground, American officials said. They are much smaller than armed drones, with wingspans as short as 18 inches, compared with 55 feet for the Predators.

The State Department has about two dozen drones in Iraq, but many are used only for spare parts, the officials said.

The United States Embassy in Baghdad referred all questions about the drones to the State Department in Washington.

The State Department confirmed the existence of the program, calling the devices unmanned aerial vehicles, but it declined to provide details. “The department does have a U.A.V. program,” it said in a statement without referring specifically to Iraq. “The U.A.V.’s being utilized by the State Department are not armed, nor are they capable of being armed.”

When the American military was still in Iraq, white blimps equipped with sensors hovered over many cities, providing the Americans with surveillance abilities beyond the dozens of armed and unarmed drones used by the military. But the blimps came down at the end of last year as the military completed its withdrawal. Anticipating this, the State Department began developing its own drone operations.

According to the most recent annual report of the department’s diplomatic security branch, issued last June, the branch worked with the Pentagon and other agencies in 2010 to research the use of low-altitude, long-endurance unmanned drones “in high-threat locations such as Iraq and Afghanistan.”

The document said that the program was tested in Iraq in December 2010. “The program will watch over State Department facilities and personnel and assist regional security officers with high-threat mission planning and execution,” the document said.

In the online prospectus, called a “presolicitation notice,” the State Department last September outlined a broad requirement to provide “worldwide Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (U.A.V.) support services.” American officials said this was to formalize the initial program.

The program’s goal is “to provide real-time surveillance of fixed installations, proposed movement routes and movement operations,” referring to American convoy movements. In addition, the program’s mission is “improving security in high-threat or potentially high-threat environments.”

The document does not identify specific countries, but contracting specialists familiar with the program say that it focuses initially on operations in Iraq. That is “where the need is greatest,” said one contracting official who spoke on condition of anonymity, because the contract is still in its early phase.

In the next few weeks, the department is expected to issue a more detailed proposal, requesting bids from private contractors to operate the drones. That document, the department said Friday, will describe the scope of the program, including the overall cost and other specifics.

While the preliminary proposal has drawn interest from more than a dozen companies, some independent specialists who are familiar with drone operations expressed skepticism about the State Department’s ability to manage such a complicated and potentially risky enterprise.

“The State Department needs to get through its head that it is not an agency adept at running military-style operations,” said Peter W. Singer, a scholar at the Brookings Institution and the author of “Wired for War,” a book about military robotics.

The American plans to use drones in the air over Iraq have also created yet another tricky issue for the two countries, as Iraq continues to assert its sovereignty after the nearly nine-year occupation. Many Iraqis remain deeply skeptical of the United States, feelings that were reinforced last week when the Marine who was the so-called ringleader of the 2005 massacre of 24 Iraqis in the village of Haditha avoided prison time and was sentenced to a reduction in rank.

“If they are afraid about their diplomats being attacked in Iraq, then they can take them out of the country,” said Mohammed Ghaleb Nasser, 57, an engineer from the northern city of Mosul.

Hisham Mohammed Salah, 37, an Internet cafe owner in Mosul, said he did not differentiate between surveillance drones and the ones that fire missiles. “We hear from time to time that drone aircraft have killed half a village in Pakistan and Afghanistan under the pretext of pursuing terrorists,” Mr. Salah said. “Our fear is that will happen in Iraq under a different pretext.”

Still, Ghanem Owaid Nizar Qaisi, 45, a teacher from Diyala, said that he doubted that the Iraqi government would stop the United States from using the drones. “I believe that Iraqi politicians will accept it, because they are weak,” he said.

Eric Schmitt reported from Washington, and Michael S. Schmidt from Baghdad.

    U.S. Drones Patrolling Its Skies Provoke Outrage in Iraq, NYT, 29.1.2012,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/30/world/middleeast/iraq-is-angered-by-us-drones-patrolling-its-skies.html

Back From War, Fear and Danger Fill Driver’s Seat

January 10, 2012
The New York Times
By JAMES DAO

PALO ALTO, Calif. — Before going to war, Susan Max loved tooling around Northern California in her maroon Mustang. A combat tour in Iraq changed all that.

Back in the States, Ms. Max, an Army reservist, found herself avoiding cramped parking lots without obvious escape routes. She straddled the middle line, as if bombs might be buried in the curbs. Gray sport-utility vehicles came to remind her of the unarmored vehicles she rode nervously through Baghdad in 2007, a record year for American fatalities in Iraq.

“I used to like driving,” Ms. Max, 63, said. “Now my family doesn’t feel safe driving with me.”

For thousands of combat veterans, driving has become an ordeal. Once their problems were viewed mainly as a form of road rage or thrill seeking. But increasingly, erratic driving by returning troops is being identified as a symptom of traumatic brain injury or post-traumatic stress disorder, or P.T.S.D. — and coming under greater scrutiny amid concerns about higher accident rates among veterans.

The insurance industry has taken notice. In a review of driving records for tens of thousands of troops before and after deployments, USAA, a leading insurer of active-duty troops, discovered that auto accidents in which the service members were at fault went up by 13 percent after deployments. Accidents were particularly common in the six months after an overseas tour, according to the review, which covered the years 2007-2010.

The company is now working with researchers, the armed services and insurance industry groups to expand research and education on the issue. The Army says that fatal accidents — which rose early in the wars — have declined in recent years, in part from improved education. Still, 48 soldiers died in vehicle accidents while off duty last year, the highest total in three years, Army statistics show.

The Pentagon and Department of Veterans Affairs are also supporting several new studies into potential links between deployment and dangerously aggressive or overly defensive driving. The Veterans Affairs health center in Albany last year started a seven-session program to help veterans identify how war experiences might trigger negative reactions during driving. And researchers in Palo Alto are developing therapies — which they hope to translate into iPhone apps — for people with P.T.S.D. who are frequently angry or anxious behind the wheel.

“I can’t talk with somebody who is a returned service member without them telling me about driving issues,” said Erica Stern , an associate professor of occupational therapy at the University of Minnesota, who is conducting a national study of driving problems in people with brain injuries or P.T.S.D. for the Pentagon.

Though bad driving among combat veterans is not new — research has found that Vietnam and Persian Gulf war veterans were more likely to die in motor vehicle accidents than nondeployed veterans — experts say Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are unique, for one major reason: their combat experiences were frequently defined by dangers on the road, particularly from roadside bombs.

“There is no accepted treatment for this,” said Dr. Steven H. Woodward , a clinical psychologist with the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System who is leading a study of potential therapies for veterans with P.T.S.D.-related driving problems. “It’s a new phenomenon.”

Though there has been some research into road rage among veterans, therapists and psychologists have only recently begun to view traumatic brain injuries and P.T.S.D. as factors in prolonging driving problems, probably by causing people to perceive threats where none exist — such as in tunnels, overpasses, construction crews or roadside debris.

“In an ambiguous situation, they are more likely to see hostile intent,” said Eric Kuhn , a psychologist with the Palo Alto Veterans Affairs Health Care System, who has studied driving problems. He said his research found that veterans who report more severe P.T.S.D. symptoms also tend to report being more aggressive drivers.

Experts note that driving problems are not always the result of the disorder. In some cases, returning troops may be reflexively applying driving techniques taught in Iraq during the height of the insurgency — for example, speeding up at intersections to avoid gunfire or scanning the roadside for danger instead of watching the road ahead.

In a study of Minnesota National Guard soldiers who returned from Iraq in 2007, Dr. Stern and fellow researchers found that a quarter reported driving through a stop sign and nearly a third said they had been told they drove dangerously in the months immediately after their tours. Both results were higher than the answers reported by National Guard cadets who had not been deployed.

Though driving problems seemed to decrease the longer the troops were home, they did not always vanish. Dr. Stern found that many Guard members remained anxious about certain roadway situations, including night driving or passing unexpected things.

“Those are things they associated with threats they saw in combat,” she said.

Ms. Max, a grandmother of four, was deployed at the age of 60 to Iraq, where one of her jobs was to carry large sums of cash to Iraqi reconstruction projects outside fortified American bases. She said she learned to be hypervigilant on those trips.

Upon returning to California, she struggled with P.T.S.D. and took time off from her nursing job. She also noticed feeling nervous for the first time in her life about driving — a major problem because she had to drive to visit patients.

“My whole driving behavior changed,” she said. “I live in a state of anxiety when I’m driving.”

Ms. Max recently participated in a clinical trial to develop and test therapies, such as deep breathing, that might overcome such anxieties. In a Pontiac Bonneville sedan outfitted with equipment to track the driver’s visual focus, heart rate and breathing, as well as to measure changes in the speed and direction of the car, the researchers take patients onto highways and observe their reactions to traffic hazards, real and imagined.

On a recent spin through the hills of Palo Alto, Ms. Max drove while Dr. Woodward monitored her heart rate and breathing on a laptop in the back seat. In front, Marc Samuels, a driving rehabilitation specialist who offers one of the only programs for P.T.S.D.-related driving problems in the nation, directed her along a preplanned route, prepared to grab the wheel if anything went awry.

Ms. Max mostly drove fine, but was startled slightly when passing a construction site and then again when two cars momentarily boxed her in. Finally, when her stress level spiked in a small parking lot, Mr. Samuels told her to stop the car and regain her composure.

Ms. Max said that the clinics had made her more aware of the things that made her nervous, a first step to conquering them. But she says she does not expect to ever feel truly comfortable driving again and has no plans to replace her beloved Mustang, which she sold just before her deployment.

“Why get a hot car?” she said. “I’m not going to enjoy it.”

    Back From War, Fear and Danger Fill Driver’s Seat, NYT, 10.1.2012,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/11/us/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-may-cause-erratic-driving.html

Attacks on Shiites in Iraq Kill at Least 60

January 5, 2012
The New York Times
By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT

BAGHDAD — Insurgents unleashed a fierce string of bombings against Iraq’s Shiites on Thursday, attacking pilgrims marching through the desert and neighborhoods in Baghdad, in an attempt to stir sectarian violence. The attacks come amid a political crisis that has brought the government to a halt less than three weeks after American troops withdrew.

According to security officials, 68 people were killed in the attacks and more than 100 wounded, marking the second devastating and apparently coordinated attack in Iraq over the past month. The most lethal attack occurred near the southern city of Nasiriya where a suicide bomber detonated an explosive vest amid a crowd of pilgrims as they waited to pass through a check point, killing 44 and wounding dozens, including several Iraqi army officers, according to security officials.

The pilgrims were making a trip to the holy city of Karbala leading up to holiday of Arbaeen, which marks the end of the 40-day mourning period for the death of Imam Hussein ibn Ali, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad.

Photographs of the bombing scene posted on the Web site of Dhi Qar Province, where the attack occurred, showed dozens of bloody bodies strewn across the ground. One photo was of a young boy with a charred shirt and pants laying face down covered in blood. Another photo was of just four fingers and what appeared to be the remnants of a hand.

No group claimed responsibility for the attacks but they appeared similar to ones conducted by Al Qaeda in Iraq, the Sunni insurgent group which has tried to plunge the country back to the brink of civil war by pitting the country’s sectarian groups against each other.

Al Qaeda in Iraq killed more than 63 people on Dec. 22 in a series of explosions across Baghdad, the deadliest day in the capital in more than a year. The attacks, however, did not reignite sectarian violence.

The violence began early on Thursday morning in Baghdad when explosives strapped to a motorcycle were detonated near a group of day laborers who had congregated by the side of the road in the slum of Sadr City, according to security officials.

Moments later, two improvised explosive devices were detonated near rescuers who were taking the wounded to a nearby hospital, the officials said. Nine people were killed in the explosions and 35 were wounded.

An hour after the Sadr City attack, two car bombs were detonated in bustling squares in the neighborhood of Kadhimiya, killing 15 people and wounding 31, according to security officials.The political crisis was set off a day after the United States withdrew its last combat troops, when the Shiite government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki accused the country’s Sunni vice president of running a death squad.

The vice president, Tariq al-Hashimi, fled Baghdad for the country’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region where Mr. Maliki’s security forces have less authority. Meanwhile, in Baghdad Sunni and Kurdish politicians have accused Mr. Maliki of trying to use the episode to consolidate his power and have boycotted sessions of Parliament.

“When politicians have a problem, the citizens are usually the ones who pay,” said Abu Sajad, a minibus driver who was near the attack in Sadr City. “This has happened before and continues to happen.”

On Wednesday, eight people were killed in attacks across the country. In the restive province of Diyala, where the local government has expressed desires for more autonomy from the central government, insurgents blew up the home of a police officer, killing his six-year old daughter and two others.

A 22-year old laborer said that at the time of the Sadr City attack he was sitting on the side of the road with other laborers around a fire. “We were sitting waiting for a job,” said the laborer, Yasir Rasul. “I saw three people inside the bus who were killed instantly,” when the motorcycle bomb exploded near a minibus, he said.

Yasir Ghazi and Zaid Thaker contributed reporting.

    Attacks on Shiites in Iraq Kill at Least 60, NYT, 5.1.2012,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/06/world/middleeast/explosions-across-baghdad-kill-dozens.html