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Nabi is a fixer and cool guy who's worked with a lot of journalists. He weighs in on Kabul under the Taliban, how he himself, grew a small beard, and the changes brought by the on-going war and the perpetual problems of gov't corruption.
Dubai is a mash up of Las Vegas, Phoenix, San Diego and Saudi Arabia. It's an empty city of perfectly new malls and hotels. I don't mean empty in the metaphysical sense, although this is easy to argue, I mean there are hundreds, thousands of sparkling buildings for rent. It's a city that revels in its new magnificence and holds no shame for aping ancient citadels and Disney theme parks. How else to wrap your head around the Dubai Mall's giant fish tanks marveled at by women in full hijabs and a palm-shaped island built into the Arabian bay so as to maximize the seaside view of each cook cutter villa. It's a city that doles out life sentences for selling marijuana cigarettes, yet is infamous for its sex trade. Like Vegas, Dubai is a place to visit, but if you stay you become a horrible person.
Kabul is a ringed by mountains and the dust winds that sweep into the city mingling with the smog. It's a city of taxis, mini-van buses, men in long beards riding bicycles. Women wearing bluish burkhas like suits of chain mail over their heads with flashy pajamas underneath. 
I didn't know how to take it. Was this not a war zone? In Baghdad we wouldn't know if the city was becoming safer for Westerners because we don't see it but from behind bullet proof glass. But in Kabul you can walk out of compounds, walk on the streets, no problems. This guy named Dallas who's an embedded consultant at the Ministry of Finance told me he takes the bus to work. I was incredulous. So when I walked outside the small guest house I was staying in for the first time, my instincts squirmed. I had my camera in hand. The guards from the embassy across the street shouted at me. They wanted to see if I'd taken pictures of their security set up. I hadn't, but I got spooked. I walked a few blocks down the dusty streets with a brave face and turned back to the guest house.
An hour later, I couldn't afford the beers, a $7 a pop price jacking in preparation for the thirsty journos descending on Kabul to cover the national election on Aug. 20th. So I went out again, walked past the embassies, past a man picking through the remnants of food garbage on the sidewalk, and headed towards the intersection where the houses clung to the hills rising into mountains. I bought a big bottle of water for one U.S. dollar. Highly useful. But I felt people were watching me, following me, call it the Baghdad syndrome.
The air was pitiful, dust particled and smog choked. A woman walked by with a perfectly made up face. I closed my mouth, bent my head downward and walked swiftly back to the guarded gates of the guest house where aid and embassy folks are drinking in a garden and being served something that smells Italian.
(A Baghdad bombing, image courtesy of Ceerwan Aziz, award-winning Baghdad Reuters photographer, see his Flikr page)
Much has been made of the downward spike in violence in Iraq. It's touted as the most encouraging news for Iraqis and for American troops and advisors. But how do we measure improvements versus the costs? Besides the billions expended, the only way to measure victory is less death.
The problem is there's no way to measure the cost of a human life against how many lives are saved or how many civilian lives are improved. There is no metric, although it's been attempted by life insurance accountants from post 9-11 NYC to field commanders who have to deal with the unenviable task of paying a couple thousand to a grieving Iraqi mother. But to the majority of us arm-chair Americanos, war deaths have become just statistics. Over six years, they have lost their capacity to bite, unless we know the soldier from back home, or can literally see the life draining from their body as in the case of Neda, the young woman in Iran whose last moments flashed across hundreds of thousands of screens.
I'm in an air-conditioned office in a guarded compound in Iraq, by the way, and I know of no other way to quantify or feel about living in semi-luxury at the moment but to look at the numbers. I have no insider knowledge. These numbers are always flashing across the CNN and news wire tickers, but we've become dulled by their constancy. A closer look at the numbers put out by the major news outlets, may be the only way to look at the very bad big picture out there where it's happening:
1. -McClatchy reported in the continued problem areas of Mosul and Kikuk, 19 Iraqis were killed and 91 were wounded in the week since June 30, the day of the official handover to Iraqi forces. During that week a year ago, 20 Iraqis were killed and 85 wounded, while in 2007, the figures were 55 killed and 150 wounded."
Compared with those civilian deaths, 15 Americans died in Iraq in June, down from 29 Killed a year ago and 101 soldiers killed in June 2007, according to icasualties.org.
-This would seem to indicate that while American deaths are down 51 percent from a year ago, and 148 percent from two years ago, violence against Iraqis in the high-conflict zones of Mosul and Kirkuk has remained relatively consistent with last year and down only 34 percent from 2007. The killings from the simmering conflict between the Kurds and Arabs over this oil-rich zone has negated Al Qaeda's ongoing defeat there.
(A Shia pilgrimage courtesy of Iraqslogger)
2. -This weekend is the annual Shiite pilgrimage to Kadhimiyah Shrine, where in 2005, 1,000 pilgrims were trampled to death in a bridge stampede when word that a suicide bomber was in the crowd spread. "On April 24 this year, during another pilgrimage to the shrine, two suicide bombers infiltrated despite the checkpoints and killed 60 pilgrims, including 25 Iranians," McClatchy reported on July 16th.
Yesterday, the daily round-up of violence reported 40 pilgrims wounded by roadside bombs and one killed.
-So clearly pilgrims are still being targeted by Sunni insurgents, but are being killed less effectively by roadside bombs than by suicide bombers who had previously been able to wander into the mass of moving people. Perhaps Iraqi forces, who have this year, deployed battalions and their own helicopters, have been better able or more inclined to guard their own people than American forces.
3. -Take the most recent day of mass violence. On the day of the June 30th hand over a mega-blast killed 28 Iraqis and wounded as many as 93 Iraqis in Kirkuk. Sixty Iraqis were killed and 135 wounded in Sadr City six days earlier. These truly horrific body counts were possibly coordinated to sow instability with the handover, but according to Iraq Body Count's data base 100 civilians were killed by violence this June compared to 670 in 2008 and 2108 in 2007.
-It reminds the observer how staggering the levels of violence were during the height of the insurgency, and also how the U.S. surge ringing the outskirts of Baghdad, combined with deploying armed Sons of Iraq at checkpoints, made a substantial difference in security. Again, we have the diminishing capability of terrorists, whether due to infiltration which has killed and disrupted their networks, or because they've fled elsewhere in the region.
From Iraq Body Count: (Iraqi deaths per day from suicide attacks and vehicle bombs (now includes non-vehicle suicide attacks)
(Iraqi deaths per day from gunfire/executions)
Now American troops have pulled out of all the major Iraqi cities, and International news outlets report that not once have they been called on by Iraqi forces for help. U.S. patrols have been banned in Baghdad. This is truly extraordinary. Unfortunately, U.S. troops are still vulnerable. Four soldiers were killed in Kirkuk on the day of the handover. Today, three U.S. soldiers were killed by indirect fire in Basra.
(Courtesy of Ceerwan Aziz)
4. -But the attention of the world has turned to Afghanistan, so it's important to compare U.S. casualties between Iraq and Afghanistan, particularly those caused by IEDs. These roadside bombs that were perfected in Iraq now are being used with increasingly lethal results on the front where the majority of our soldiers are deploying. The Department of Defense is contemplating increasing the Army by 30,000. Where could we imagine they go but Afghanistan?
USA Today reported on July 9, "The total number of roadside bomb attacks in Afghanistan hit 736 in June, which set a record for the fourth straight month. These attacks have risen from 361 in March, to 407 in April and 465 in May, records show."
"This June's attacks in Afghanistan killed 23 troops and wounded another 166, records show. That was a 73 percent increase from the 96 troops wounded in May, the previous high."
"In Iraq, where IEDs remain the top killer of U.S. troops, overall attacks have plummeted." There were an astounding 2,588 roadside bombings against U.S. forces in June 2007, compared with 602 in June 2008 and 260 this June. Two hundred sixty still sounds like a ton. But the news gets better when talking overall casualties in Iraq.
"(Casualty-causing) IED attacks dropped from 242 in June 2007, to 47 last year to only 26 last month."
-Much of the lessening effectiveness of these attacks in Iraq must be due to the pervasive use of the MRAP, at a million dollars a vehicle, its V-shape hull and heavier armor makes the flat-bottomed Humvee look like a rolling coffin. But the MRAP is a very heavy vehicle that's harder to use in Afghanistan where there are more unpaved roads prone to collapsing. The U.S. military plans to double the number of MRAPs deployed to Afghanistan according to Stars and Stripes, but whether this new order of MRAPs represents the lighter version of the vehicle redesigned for Afghanistan remains to be seen.
5. -The sobering big picture in comparing Iraq and Afghanistan is total soldiers killed and rising versus declining death rates. According to Icasualties.org, 4,326 U.S. soldiers have been killed in Iraq compared to 740 in Afghanistan. This puts the proportions in check, but whereas in Afghanistan there was a 6o percent rise in (from 30 to 50) soldiers killed between July 2008- July 2009, there was a 38 percent decline in Iraq (from 13-5) between July 2008- July 2009.
-Basically the spikes are going in opposite directions, but U.S. deaths in Afghanistan are only 17 percent of the total U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq.
6 -Iraq Body Count estimates between 92,489-100,971 Iraqi civilians have been killed violently since the 2003 invasion, using daily cross-checked media reports, hospital, morgue and NGO reports to form a credible record. A 2006 study in Lancet medical journal implied that over 7% of the entire adult male population of Iraq has been killed in violence, with no less than 10% in the worst affected areas covering most of central Iraq.
Sorry for stating these obvious conclusions. Bless the souls of all who have died in these countries.
Baghdad- On a day filled with two showy events, the real story was the bombing in Kirkuk. Thirty-three dead. Not to be morbid, but problems in Kirkuk underlie country-wide problems in the transfer of Iraqi forces taking over security in major Iraqi cities and the much-publicized failure of first round bidding for oil service contracts.
The transfer of power has been a long time coming here, and the Prime Minister squeezed every ounce of political capital out of it, with a showy parade beginning by the tomb of the unknown solider, and armored trucks festooned with flowers and balloons rolling out into the streets of Baghdad. I saw every shape of vehicle, from tank to fire truck, decorated and troop transports overflowing with banner-waving soldiers. PM Maliki reportedly didn't even mention U.S. forces in taking credit for security gains in Iraq. But as the bombing in Kirkuk highlighted, and the deaths of four U.S. soldiers on Monday, security gains will surely be tested once U.S. forces are truly out of still-volatile areas like Sadr City, Mosul and Baquba. 
On the same day, on the other side of the Green Zone, the Al Rasheed hotel was overflowing with translucent ear-pieced body guards and Western-looking suits at the oil service contracts bidding event. Minister of Oil Sharistani held court on the stage next to a clear box, reinforcing the message of transparency of awarding contracts to big players- the foreign bids were opened on the stage in front of live TV cameras, where what the Oil Ministry would pay for refining services were also displayed.
Unfortunately for the Minister, only one of eight contracts was accepted by the consortium of BP and China National Petroleum Corp. an agreement to extract x-many barrels per day and be paid by Iraq per barrel produced, for the Rumalia field, the largest one of the eight. A contract for a field in Diyala didn't get a single bid.
Both Western and Iraqi papers were buzzing the failure of the event to garner more contracts, how it would be the political death knell for Sharistani, a respected reformer, but US Gov. reps I spoke with were impressed by the overall transparency of the process which they Minister insisted upon. But Ministry pay out of $2 per barrel was almost universally too low for the risks. I heard laughs amongst the audience of international oil men when the Iraqi renumerations were announced.
Some said the Ministry of Oil should have used a "step up system" rewarding Western companies for hitting a certain level of production. At the same time, Iraqi could face an OPEC quota if they increase their production too quickly. Some advisors say they would do better to raise gradually, and maybe using too many Western companies would prevent this.
It seems the Ministry plans to recover with the second bidding round moved up to the end of this year, when undeveloped oil fields will be offered, along with re-offer the five fields that weren't taken during this round. It will be interesting whether the Iraqi pay outs per barrel will rise to meet oil company risks. What choice does the Ministry have? Oil accounts for approx. 90% of Iraq's revenue and production is lagging by millions of barrels per day.
Iraq needs the international companies' up-to-date refining capabilities, but nationalist politics and maneuvering against the Prime Minister's growing power will surely continue to throw kinks in the of inking major oil deals until there's some kind of tipping point.
