Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: All Iraqi Groups Blame U.S. Invasion for Discord, Study Shows

All Iraqi Groups Blame U.S. Invasion for Discord, Study Shows
By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 19, 2007; A14
Iraqis of all sectarian and ethnic groups believe that the U.S. military
invasion is the primary root of the violent differences among them, and
see the departure of "occupying forces" as the key to national
reconciliation, according to focus groups conducted for the U.S. military
last month.
That is good news, according to a military analysis of the results. At the
very least, analysts optimistically concluded, the findings indicate that
Iraqis hold some "shared beliefs" that may eventually allow them to
surmount the divisions that have led to a civil war.
Conducting the focus groups, in 19 separate sessions organized by outside
contractors in five cities, is among the ways in which Multi-National
Force-Iraq assesses conditions in the country beyond counting insurgent
attacks, casualties and weapons caches. The command, led by Army Gen.
David H. Petraeus, devotes more time and resources than any other
government or independent entity to measuring various matters, including
electricity, satisfaction with trash collection and what Iraqis think it
will take for them to get along.
The results are analyzed and presented to Petraeus as part of the daily
Battle Update Assessment or BUA (pronounced boo-ah). Some of the news has
been unarguably good, including the sharply reduced number of roadside
bombings and attacks on civilians. But bad news is often presented with a
bright side, such as the focus-group results and a November poll, which
found that 25 percent of Baghdad residents were satisfied with their local
government and that 15 percent said they had enough fuel for heating and
cooking.
The good news? Those numbers were higher than the figures of the previous
month (18 percent and 9 percent, respectively).
And Iraqi complaints about matters other than security are seen as
progress. Early this year, Maj. Fred Garcia, an MNF-I analyst, said that
"a very large percentage of people would answer questions about security
by saying 'I don't know.' Now, we get more griping because people feel
freer."
Iraqi political reconciliation, quality-of-life issues and the economy are
largely the responsibility of the State Department. But the military, to
the occasional consternation of U.S. diplomats who feel vastly
outnumbered, has its own "mirror agencies" in many areas. Officers in
charge of civil-military operations, said senior Petraeus adviser Army
Col. William E. Rapp, "can tell you how many markets are open in Baghdad,
how many shops, how many banks are open. . . . We have a lot more people"
on the ground.
On Iraqi politics, "we have four to six slides almost every morning on
'Where does the Iraqi government stand on de-Baathification legislation?'
All these things are embassy things," Rapp said. But Petraeus is
interested in "his 'feel' for a situation, and he gets that from a bunch
of different data points," he added.
Even though members of the military "understand the limitations" of
polling data, Rapp said, "subjective measures" are an important part of
the mix. In July, the military signed a contract with Gallup for four
public opinion polls a month in Iraq: three nationwide and one in Baghdad.
Lincoln Group, which has conducted surveys for the military since shortly
after the invasion, received a year-long contract in January to conduct
focus groups.
Outside of the military, some of the most widespread polling in Iraq has
been done by D3 Systems, a Virginia-based company that maintains offices
in each of Iraq's 18 provinces. Its most recent publicly released surveys,
conducted in September for several news media organizations, showed the
same widespread Iraqi belief voiced by the military's focus groups: that a
U.S. departure will make things better. A State Department poll in
September 2006 reported a similar finding.
Matthew Warshaw, a senior research manager at D3, said that despite
security improvements, polling in Iraq remains difficult. "While violence
has gone down, one of the ways it has been achieved is by effectively
separating people. That means mobility is limited, with roadblocks by the
U.S. and Iraqi military or local militias," Warshaw said in an interview.
Most of the recent survey results he has seen about political
reconciliation, Warshaw said, are "more about [Iraqis] reconciling with
the United States within their own particular territory, like in Anbar. .
 . But it doesn't say anything about how Sunni groups feel about Shiite
groups in Baghdad."
Warshaw added: "In Iraq, I just don't hear statements that come from any
of the Sunni, Shiite or Kurdish groups that say 'We recognize that we need
to share power with the others, that we can't truly dominate.' "
According to a summary report of the focus-group findings obtained by The
Washington Post, Iraqis have a number of "shared beliefs" about the
current situation that cut across sectarian lines. Participants, in
separate groups of men and women, were interviewed in Ramadi, Najaf,
Irbil, Abu Ghraib and in Sunni and Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad. The
report does not mention how the participants were selected.
Dated December 2007, the report notes that "the Iraqi government has still
made no significant progress toward its fundamental goal of national
reconciliation." Asked to describe "the current situation in Iraq to a
foreign visitor," some groups focused on positive aspects of the recent
security improvements. But "most would describe the negative elements of
life in Iraq beginning with the 'U.S. occupation' in March 2003," the
report says.
Some participants also blamed Iranian meddling for Iraq's problems. While
the United States was said to want to control Iraq's oil, Iran was seen as
seeking to extend its political and religious agendas.
Few mentioned Saddam Hussein as a cause of their problems, which the
report described as an important finding implying that "the current strife
in Iraq seems to have totally eclipsed any agonies or grievances many
Iraqis would have incurred from the past regime, which lasted for nearly
four decades -- as opposed to the current conflict, which has lasted for
five years."
Overall, the report said that "these findings may be expected to conclude
that national reconciliation is neither anticipated nor possible. In
reality, this survey provides very strong evidence that the opposite is
true." A sense of "optimistic possibility permeated all focus groups . . .
and far more commonalities than differences are found among these
seemingly diverse groups of Iraqis."
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 surmount the divisions that have led to a civil war.
LOL! Poi leggi un criminale come Pipes che dice che il rapporto NIE
dimostra che l'Iran va attaccato ancora più oggi (che si sa di sicuro
che non ha la bomba) di ieri (che si cianciava l'avesse) e ridi di
meno. Questi nemici dell'umanità vanno estirpati dalla faccia della
terra, se l'umanità vuole sopravvivere...