Conflicts between provincial governments and local Sunni Arab forces allied with the US intensified this weekend in two Iraqi provinces.
The conflicts raise the prospect that the creation of the forces, known as Awakening Councils or Concerned Local Citizens, formed to fight extremists and bring calm to the country, might instead add to the unrest in two provinces, Diyala and Anbar.
In Diyala Province, northeast of Baghdad, 300 members of the local concerned citizens groups, many of whom are former insurgents, left their outposts, from which they start patrols and guard the surrounding areas.
The citizens groups said they took the step as a protest against the Shiite police commander for the province, whom they accuse of being sectarian and a member of the Mehdi Army, a militia affiliated with the anti-US rebel cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, according to an official in the governor's office who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
The police commander, Staff General Ghanim al-Quraishi, has accused many in these citizens' groups of continuing their past activities of killing and displacing Shiite families and has removed some of them from their posts and detained others.
The US military recruits and pays the groups to fight Islamic extremists. Although the groups have mostly seemed to be cooperating, more recently their behavior has been problematic.
In Anbar Province, tensions escalated between leaders of the local Awakening movement and the Iraqi Islamic Party, which as the sole major Sunni party to contest the most recent local elections won control of the provincial council.
Party members said on Saturday that they might bring a lawsuit against the Awakening leaders for saying they would oust the party from control; the leaders had previously called for a new election in the next couple of months in order to try to win seats on the council.
In southern Iraq more than 30 people from different Shiite groups were detained by the police, who are also Shiite in those areas. In Karbala at least 15 people were taken into custody and at least 15 were picked up by the police in the Nasiriyah area, according to local police officers.
The detentions appeared aimed in part at curtailing the activities of a messianic Shiite cult, the Soldiers of Heaven, but appeared to include some people who had no affiliation with the group.
A police spokesman in Karbala denied that those arrested were connected with al-Sadr's militia. More arrests were under way in Nasiriyah on Saturday, according to Ahmed Taha, the province governor's deputy. In Najaf, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani visited with the five members of the Marjaia, the most senior clerics in Iraq, including Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.
Afterward, Talabani told reporters that contrary to some Iraqi news reports, there was no plan among them to dump Prime Minister Nouri Kamal al-Maliki.
"Maliki will not be replaced, there is a deal on keeping the prime minister, changing the ministers and reducing the number of ministries by half," apparently referring to long-standing discussions among the leaders of different political parties about restructuring the government.
He said that the goal was to create a governing coalition made up of the six parties that together would represent Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds.
SPIRITUAL COUPLE: Martha Louise has said she can talk with angels, while her husband, Durek Verrett, claims that he communicates with a broad range of spirits Social media influencers, reality stars and TV personalities were among the guests as the Norwegian king’s eldest child, Princess Martha Louise, married a self-professed US shaman on Saturday in a wedding ceremony following three days of festivities. The 52-year-old Martha Louise and Durek Verrett, who claims to be a sixth-generation shaman from California, tied the knot in the picturesque small town of Geiranger, one of Norway’s major tourist attractions located on a fjord with stunning views. Following festivities that started on Thursday, the actual wedding ceremony took place in a large white tent set up on a lush lawn. Guests
Four days after last scanning in for work, a 60-year-old office worker in Arizona was found dead in a cubicle at her workplace, having never left the building during that time, authorities said. Denise Prudhomme, who worked at a Wells Fargo corporate office, was found dead in a third-floor cubicle on Aug. 20, Tempe police said. She had last scanned into the building on Aug. 16 at 7am, police said. There was no indication she scanned out of the building after that. Prudhomme worked in an underpopulated area of the building. Her cause of death had not been determined, but police said the preliminary
‘DISCONNECTED’: Politics is one factor driving news avoidance, a professor said, adding that people who do not trust the government are more likely to tune it out Hannah Wong cried when the Hong Kong government effectively forced the territory’s Apple Daily and Stand News out of business three years ago. Among the last news firms in the territory willing to criticize the government openly, many saw their end as a sign that the old Hong Kong was gone for good. Today, the 35-year-old makeup artist says she has gone from reading the news every day to reducing her intake drastically to protect herself from despair. Four years into a crackdown on dissent that has swept up democracy-leaning journalists, rights advocates and politicians in the territory, a lot of people
Thailand has netted more than 1.3 million kilograms of highly destructive blackchin tilapia fish, the government said yesterday, as it battles to stamp out the invasive species. Shoals of blackchin tilapia, which can produce up to 500 young at a time, have been found in 19 provinces, damaging ecosystems in rivers, swamps and canals by preying on small fish, shrimp and snail larvae. As well as the ecological impact, the government is worried about the effect on the kingdom’s crucial fish-farming industry. Fishing authorities caught 1,332,000kg of blackchin tilapia from February to Wednesday last week, said Nattacha Boonchaiinsawat, vice president of a parliamentary