Michael Ware
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Baghdad
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TIME: Iraq's Resistance After Saddam
Friday, December 19, 2003
By MICHAEL WARE / BAGHDAD
The insurgents are currently in a process of consolidation, reconstituting themselves into tighter and more committed cells, cleaving away the hangers-on and the remotely suspect. Although Saddam's arrest has hardly persuaded them to put down their weapons, some are feeling more cornered than before, others angrier and even more willing to wreak havoc. That may mean they're a little more dangerous, now, their antennae more acutely tuned to pick up signs of trouble, making them more careful to avoid unnecessary risk and more vigilant in their activities.
Read More...
The insurgents are currently in a process of consolidation, reconstituting themselves into tighter and more committed cells, cleaving away the hangers-on and the remotely suspect. Although Saddam's arrest has hardly persuaded them to put down their weapons, some are feeling more cornered than before, others angrier and even more willing to wreak havoc. That may mean they're a little more dangerous, now, their antennae more acutely tuned to pick up signs of trouble, making them more careful to avoid unnecessary risk and more vigilant in their activities.
Read More...
TIME: Life Behind Enemy Lines
Monday, December 15, 2003
By BRIAN BENNETT; MICHAEL WARE / BAGHDAD
For Abu Ali, lethal rocket strikes against the U.S. occupation army are part of the regular routine. At the modest farmhouse of a fellow member of his network of insurgents one recent evening, Abu Ali--the nom de guerre he has chosen--welcomes seven fighters into a room lined with worn sofas. Despite the steady whoomp-whoomp of circling U.S. helicopters, the insurgents sit back, chain-smoking and chatting about weapons, tactics, the long lines to get gasoline, whose children are starting to crawl. A young man spreads a plastic sheet on the floor and lays out plates of roasted chicken, rice, bean soup and boiled vegetables. As the men eat, the talk is jovial, full of laughter and noisy boasting. The presence of a reporter for a U.S. magazine does not seem to faze them. "American soldier very afraid," roars Abu Ali. "We are not." A grinning fighter brags about what would have happened if he had known President George W. Bush would be in the Baghdad airport complex on Thanksgiving Day. "We would have ... whoosh!" he says, motioning as if firing a shoulder-launched missile.
Read More...
For Abu Ali, lethal rocket strikes against the U.S. occupation army are part of the regular routine. At the modest farmhouse of a fellow member of his network of insurgents one recent evening, Abu Ali--the nom de guerre he has chosen--welcomes seven fighters into a room lined with worn sofas. Despite the steady whoomp-whoomp of circling U.S. helicopters, the insurgents sit back, chain-smoking and chatting about weapons, tactics, the long lines to get gasoline, whose children are starting to crawl. A young man spreads a plastic sheet on the floor and lays out plates of roasted chicken, rice, bean soup and boiled vegetables. As the men eat, the talk is jovial, full of laughter and noisy boasting. The presence of a reporter for a U.S. magazine does not seem to faze them. "American soldier very afraid," roars Abu Ali. "We are not." A grinning fighter brags about what would have happened if he had known President George W. Bush would be in the Baghdad airport complex on Thanksgiving Day. "We would have ... whoosh!" he says, motioning as if firing a shoulder-launched missile.
Read More...
NPR: Iraqi Insurgents Tell Reporters of Strategies
Sunday, December 07, 2003
Recent articles
by U.S. journalists portray the workings of guerrilla
groups trying to force the U.S.-led occupying force out
of Iraq. Experts say that insurgent attacks in Iraq are
becoming increasingly sophisticated and violent. NPR's
Robert Siegel talks with Time
magazine's
Michael Ware.
TIME: The Secret Collaborators
Monday, October 20, 2003
By MICHAEL WARE / BAGHDAD
Saddam Hussein didn't want to believe what his intelligence networks were saying. Before the war last spring, says a former colonel in the Iraqi intelligence service, Saddam's analysts presented him with classified reports predicting a decisive U.S. victory. The documents described how the Iraqi security forces, already outmatched, had been undermined by Washington's success in recruiting Iraqi spies and double agents. Internal intelligence reported to Saddam that Iraq's defenses would probably collapse. "We diplomatically suggested he should not stay here," the colonel says, "because we couldn't tell him outright that he had to step down." Even as U.S. troops moved into his capital, Saddam struck a resilient pose, appearing on Iraqi TV one day wading through a worshipful Baghdad crowd, grinning broadly, pumping his fist in the air, stopping to kiss a child.
Read More...
Saddam Hussein didn't want to believe what his intelligence networks were saying. Before the war last spring, says a former colonel in the Iraqi intelligence service, Saddam's analysts presented him with classified reports predicting a decisive U.S. victory. The documents described how the Iraqi security forces, already outmatched, had been undermined by Washington's success in recruiting Iraqi spies and double agents. Internal intelligence reported to Saddam that Iraq's defenses would probably collapse. "We diplomatically suggested he should not stay here," the colonel says, "because we couldn't tell him outright that he had to step down." Even as U.S. troops moved into his capital, Saddam struck a resilient pose, appearing on Iraqi TV one day wading through a worshipful Baghdad crowd, grinning broadly, pumping his fist in the air, stopping to kiss a child.
Read More...
TIME: Chasing a Mirage
Monday, October 06, 2003
By NANCY GIBBS and MICHAEL WARE / BAGHDAD
The trader was actually sitting at home in Baghdad, waiting. He knew it was only a matter of time before the Americans came. It was just after curfew on the night of June 22, ten weeks after Saddam Hussein's fall, when he heard a helicopter overhead, the humvees in the street outside, the knock at the door. U.S. soldiers came rushing into the house, broke his bed, searched everywhere, then put a blindfold on him and drove him away.
Read More...
The trader was actually sitting at home in Baghdad, waiting. He knew it was only a matter of time before the Americans came. It was just after curfew on the night of June 22, ten weeks after Saddam Hussein's fall, when he heard a helicopter overhead, the humvees in the street outside, the knock at the door. U.S. soldiers came rushing into the house, broke his bed, searched everywhere, then put a blindfold on him and drove him away.
Read More...
TIME: Caught on Tape
Thursday, September 18, 2003
By MICHAEL WARE
TIME has received a 27-minute-long video from anti-U.S. resistance fighters, documenting an attack on a U.S. position at an old Iraqi ammunition facility. The tape was allegedly produced by Mohammed's Second Army, one of the three groups who claimed credit for the U.N. bombing. This particular cell, the Anbar Branch, did not pull off that bombing, but they claim to have some knowledge of that attack. The video taped aired on ABC News on Wednesday night and can be viewed at abcnews.com.
Read More...
TIME has received a 27-minute-long video from anti-U.S. resistance fighters, documenting an attack on a U.S. position at an old Iraqi ammunition facility. The tape was allegedly produced by Mohammed's Second Army, one of the three groups who claimed credit for the U.N. bombing. This particular cell, the Anbar Branch, did not pull off that bombing, but they claim to have some knowledge of that attack. The video taped aired on ABC News on Wednesday night and can be viewed at abcnews.com.
Read More...
COURIER-MAIL: Life is a war zone
Saturday, August 30, 2003
Former Courier-Mail reporter Michael Ware, now Time
magazine's Baghdad bureau chief, finds the Iraqi capital
has everything and nothing in common with
Brisbane
Read More...
Read More...
NPR: Explosion in Baghdad
Tuesday, August 19, 2003
NPR's Steve
Inskeep talks with Michael Ware, reporter for
Time
magazine. Michael
Ware is in Baghdad, and he describes the scene on the
ground.
TIME: How al-Qaeda's Ally Came Back
Saturday, August 16, 2003
By MICHAEL WARE / BAGHDAD
When U.S. special forces led an assault in March on a compound in northern Iraq belonging to the militant group Ansar al-Islam, U.S. officials said they had taken out a significant terrorist threat. Before the war, Bush Administration officials identified Ansar, some of whose members are believed to have trained in al-Qaeda camps, as a link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, a claim based on reports that Saddam had dispatched an agent to northern Iraq to establish ties with Ansar. On March 26, after the strike on the compound, Bush said the U.S. had "destroyed the base of a terrorist group in northern Iraq that sought to attack America and Europe with deadly poisons."
Read More...
When U.S. special forces led an assault in March on a compound in northern Iraq belonging to the militant group Ansar al-Islam, U.S. officials said they had taken out a significant terrorist threat. Before the war, Bush Administration officials identified Ansar, some of whose members are believed to have trained in al-Qaeda camps, as a link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, a claim based on reports that Saddam had dispatched an agent to northern Iraq to establish ties with Ansar. On March 26, after the strike on the compound, Bush said the U.S. had "destroyed the base of a terrorist group in northern Iraq that sought to attack America and Europe with deadly poisons."
Read More...
TIME: Just Who is Pursuing Saddam?
Monday, August 11, 2003
By MICHAEL WARE and BRIAN BENNETT / TIKRIT
Any of the various U.S. military units stationed in Iraq would be thrilled to be part of the hunt for Saddam. And they could be at any time, should intelligence point to his presence in areas they patrol.
Read More...
Any of the various U.S. military units stationed in Iraq would be thrilled to be part of the hunt for Saddam. And they could be at any time, should intelligence point to his presence in areas they patrol.
Read More...
NPR: Violence Continues to Hound Troops in Baghdad
Friday, August 08, 2003
TIME: A Deadly Car Bomb Attack Rocks Baghdad
Thursday, August 07, 2003
By MICHAEL WARE
With a roar and a rolling shockwave that shattered windows and trembled rooftops across northern Baghdad this morning the grinding guerrilla war entered a new and more lethal phase. Shortly before 11 am local time a bomb in a Coaster minivan outside the Jordanian embassy detonated with horrific force, unleashing a fireball that incinerated a car full of people passing by. Those in front of the building were killed instantly, the clothes wrenched from their bodies and flung in tufts like singed confetti, their flesh torched. More than 50 others inside the compound or in the family homes nearby were wounded.
Read More...
With a roar and a rolling shockwave that shattered windows and trembled rooftops across northern Baghdad this morning the grinding guerrilla war entered a new and more lethal phase. Shortly before 11 am local time a bomb in a Coaster minivan outside the Jordanian embassy detonated with horrific force, unleashing a fireball that incinerated a car full of people passing by. Those in front of the building were killed instantly, the clothes wrenched from their bodies and flung in tufts like singed confetti, their flesh torched. More than 50 others inside the compound or in the family homes nearby were wounded.
Read More...
NPR: In Tikrit, U.S. Forces Face Iraqi Resistance
Friday, June 13, 2003
Conducting
airstrikes and artillery assaults, U.S. forces clash with
Iraqi troops in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit. U.S.
military planners had expected remnants of the Iraqi army
and Baath party may mount a last stand there, but reports
suggest that many soldiers have fled and that defenses in
the city are seriously weakened. Hear Michael Ware
of Time
magazine.
TIME: The Turks Enter Iraq
Thursday, April 24, 2003
By MICHAEL WARE
Even as the U.S. works to stabilize a postwar Iraq, Turkey is setting out to create a footprint of its own in the Kurdish areas of the country. In the days after U.S. forces captured Saddam's powerbase in Tikrit, a dozen Turkish Special Forces troops were dispatched south from Turkey. Their target: the northern oil city of Kirkuk, now controlled by the U.S. 173rd Airborne Division's 3rd Brigade. Using the pretext of accompanying humanitarian aid the elite soldiers passed through the northern city of Arbil on Tuesday. They wore civilian clothes, their vehicles lagging behind a legitimate aid convoy. They'd hoped to pass unnoticed. But at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Kirkuk they ran into trouble. "We were waiting for them," says a U.S. paratroop officer.
Read More...
Even as the U.S. works to stabilize a postwar Iraq, Turkey is setting out to create a footprint of its own in the Kurdish areas of the country. In the days after U.S. forces captured Saddam's powerbase in Tikrit, a dozen Turkish Special Forces troops were dispatched south from Turkey. Their target: the northern oil city of Kirkuk, now controlled by the U.S. 173rd Airborne Division's 3rd Brigade. Using the pretext of accompanying humanitarian aid the elite soldiers passed through the northern city of Arbil on Tuesday. They wore civilian clothes, their vehicles lagging behind a legitimate aid convoy. They'd hoped to pass unnoticed. But at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Kirkuk they ran into trouble. "We were waiting for them," says a U.S. paratroop officer.
Read More...
TIME: A Family's Last Stand for Saddam
Monday, April 21, 2003
By MICHAEL WARE / KIRKUK
Knowing that U.S.-led Kurdish soldiers had entered Kirkuk, Abdul Karim Hamdaniy and his son Ahmed donned plain khaki military uniforms, strapped on ammunition-filled webbing and, with Kalashnikov rifles in hand, headed out of their homes.
Read More...
Knowing that U.S.-led Kurdish soldiers had entered Kirkuk, Abdul Karim Hamdaniy and his son Ahmed donned plain khaki military uniforms, strapped on ammunition-filled webbing and, with Kalashnikov rifles in hand, headed out of their homes.
Read More...
NPR: Northern Iraq
Tuesday, April 15, 2003
TIME: Dispatches From the Front
Monday, March 31, 2003
By
SIMON ROBINSON;
MICHAEL WARE
KURDISTAN -- MICHAEL WARE
At about 2:45 p.m. Saturday in the Kurdish city of Gerdigo, in northern Iraq, I heard the thump of a mortar firing. It was coming from the battle line held by Ansar al-Islam, a Kurdish fundamentalist Islamic group that's allied with al-Qaeda, with some support from Saddam Hussein. Read More...
KURDISTAN -- MICHAEL WARE
At about 2:45 p.m. Saturday in the Kurdish city of Gerdigo, in northern Iraq, I heard the thump of a mortar firing. It was coming from the battle line held by Ansar al-Islam, a Kurdish fundamentalist Islamic group that's allied with al-Qaeda, with some support from Saddam Hussein. Read More...
TIME: Battling Terrorists in the Hills
Sunday, March 30, 2003
By MICHAEL WARE / I SHRAM MOUNTAIN
The battle rages, fierce and bloody, perhaps the heaviest fighting northern Iraq has seen so far in this war. U.S. special forces are here, along with their Kurdish allies, facing down Ansar al-Islam, the diehard terrorist group based in Kurdish-controlled Iraq that the Americans believe is linked to al-Qaeda. "There are three or four isolated pockets of Ansar on very high ground. We're closing in on them from everywhere we can," says an American commando named Mark, who declines to give his rank or surname. The fire coming down from the craggy peak is torrid. Machineguns rattle from above. Ansar snipers pin down troops, their rounds pinging off rocks and buzzing past heads. In return, Kurdish artillery fires in from the flat plains about 2 miles below. Thick whistles sound uncomfortably overhead as a shell passes the Americans' position. It thwacks into the mountainside. "If we can get the blocking force in place, we can smoke them," shouts a U.S. soldier.
Read More...
The battle rages, fierce and bloody, perhaps the heaviest fighting northern Iraq has seen so far in this war. U.S. special forces are here, along with their Kurdish allies, facing down Ansar al-Islam, the diehard terrorist group based in Kurdish-controlled Iraq that the Americans believe is linked to al-Qaeda. "There are three or four isolated pockets of Ansar on very high ground. We're closing in on them from everywhere we can," says an American commando named Mark, who declines to give his rank or surname. The fire coming down from the craggy peak is torrid. Machineguns rattle from above. Ansar snipers pin down troops, their rounds pinging off rocks and buzzing past heads. In return, Kurdish artillery fires in from the flat plains about 2 miles below. Thick whistles sound uncomfortably overhead as a shell passes the Americans' position. It thwacks into the mountainside. "If we can get the blocking force in place, we can smoke them," shouts a U.S. soldier.
Read More...
TIME: The War and Kurdistan
Thursday, March 20, 2003
By MICHAEL WARE;
JOSHUA KUCERA
On the Iraqi Front
As the first cruise missiles plunged into Baghdad on Thursday morning the conscripts of the 8th Division of the Iraqi army's 1st Corps hunkered down in their gunpits. During the bombardment hitting far to the south the Iraqis sat tight while below them the Kurdish villagers of Shorish waited hopefully for American bombs to rain down. But they did not come.
Read More...
On the Iraqi Front
As the first cruise missiles plunged into Baghdad on Thursday morning the conscripts of the 8th Division of the Iraqi army's 1st Corps hunkered down in their gunpits. During the bombardment hitting far to the south the Iraqis sat tight while below them the Kurdish villagers of Shorish waited hopefully for American bombs to rain down. But they did not come.
Read More...
TIME: Iraq Jockeys for Position in Kurdistan
Saturday, March 08, 2003
By MICHAEL WARE
As Saddam Hussein prepares for a possible U.S. invasion, his troops are quietly jockeying for strategic position in Kurdistan. One example came last week in Duanzasimam, a dust-blown village of about 600 people separated from the Iraqi frontline bunkers by a ripple of dirty brown ridges. On the morning of February 28, Salam Rahim heard the unmistakable, and familiar, crack of explosions skirting the hamlet. He reached for the Kalashnikov he keeps on his sitting room floor as his wife and children ran out the gate. "The women and children were scared and half of the people fled to the mountain behind us," he says. "Once we heard the mortars all the armed men of the village ran to the hill near the Iraqis."
Read More...
As Saddam Hussein prepares for a possible U.S. invasion, his troops are quietly jockeying for strategic position in Kurdistan. One example came last week in Duanzasimam, a dust-blown village of about 600 people separated from the Iraqi frontline bunkers by a ripple of dirty brown ridges. On the morning of February 28, Salam Rahim heard the unmistakable, and familiar, crack of explosions skirting the hamlet. He reached for the Kalashnikov he keeps on his sitting room floor as his wife and children ran out the gate. "The women and children were scared and half of the people fled to the mountain behind us," he says. "Once we heard the mortars all the armed men of the village ran to the hill near the Iraqis."
Read More...
TIME: More Killings in Kurdistan
Wednesday, March 05, 2003
By MICHAEL WARE / HALABJA
The Kurdish region in northern Iraq, a pivotal staging point for any U.S. invasion, is an unsettling place at the best of times. Five bodies left sprawled on the road by a checkpoint on March 4 has made it even more so. Among the dead was Abullah Qasre, a leading figure in a local militant Islamic group known as Komal, one of the plethora of sectarian factions that riddle Kurdish politics. Komal, however, has come to be particularly important in recent months in light of the bloody war raging between ruling parties of Iraqi Kurdistan and Islamist groups linked with al-Qaeda, such as Ansar al-Islam. The local government had entered into a covert dialogue with Komal, hoping to draw it out of the Islamist nexus. The bloody checkpoint scene, captured by a Time photographer who arrived during the gun battle, has now thrown that dialogue into disarray. Komal supporters immediately blamed local government forces for the ambush.
Read More...
The Kurdish region in northern Iraq, a pivotal staging point for any U.S. invasion, is an unsettling place at the best of times. Five bodies left sprawled on the road by a checkpoint on March 4 has made it even more so. Among the dead was Abullah Qasre, a leading figure in a local militant Islamic group known as Komal, one of the plethora of sectarian factions that riddle Kurdish politics. Komal, however, has come to be particularly important in recent months in light of the bloody war raging between ruling parties of Iraqi Kurdistan and Islamist groups linked with al-Qaeda, such as Ansar al-Islam. The local government had entered into a covert dialogue with Komal, hoping to draw it out of the Islamist nexus. The bloody checkpoint scene, captured by a Time photographer who arrived during the gun battle, has now thrown that dialogue into disarray. Komal supporters immediately blamed local government forces for the ambush.
Read More...
TIME: Lying in Wait in Kurdistan
Monday, March 03, 2003
By MICHAEL WARE / HALABJA
Along a vast front line snaking through northern Iraq, in bunkers and staging posts only a few miles from an estimated 50,000 anti-Baghdad Kurdish fighters, Saddam Hussein has stationed tens of thousands of badly fed, sadly equipped conscripts from his I and V Corps of the Iraqi army. But the Kurdish fighters, known as the peshmerga (those who face death), are not worried about their enemy's proximity. These bedraggled Iraqi soldiers are unwilling to die for a leader they loathe.
Read More...
Along a vast front line snaking through northern Iraq, in bunkers and staging posts only a few miles from an estimated 50,000 anti-Baghdad Kurdish fighters, Saddam Hussein has stationed tens of thousands of badly fed, sadly equipped conscripts from his I and V Corps of the Iraqi army. But the Kurdish fighters, known as the peshmerga (those who face death), are not worried about their enemy's proximity. These bedraggled Iraqi soldiers are unwilling to die for a leader they loathe.
Read More...
TIME: Kurdistan: Death in the Afternoon
Wednesday, February 26, 2003
By MICHAEL WARE / HALABJA
An unsuspecting taxi driver was both the vehicle and a victim of a suicide bombing in Northern Iraq, today — an attack that served as a reminder that there are no rules in the campaign by the Qaeda-linked Ansar al-Islam against the local Kurdish authorities. The fight for control of a tiny sliver of northern Iraq pitches fighters loyal to the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which rules the eastern part of the territory liberated from Saddam Hussein in 1991, against Ansar, a small cadre of homegrown Islamic militants supported, trained and reinforced by Osama bin Laden's organization. And today, as a Bush administration envoy met Iraqi opposition leaders at Erbil, some 150 miles north of Halabja, Ansar played rough.
Read More...
An unsuspecting taxi driver was both the vehicle and a victim of a suicide bombing in Northern Iraq, today — an attack that served as a reminder that there are no rules in the campaign by the Qaeda-linked Ansar al-Islam against the local Kurdish authorities. The fight for control of a tiny sliver of northern Iraq pitches fighters loyal to the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which rules the eastern part of the territory liberated from Saddam Hussein in 1991, against Ansar, a small cadre of homegrown Islamic militants supported, trained and reinforced by Osama bin Laden's organization. And today, as a Bush administration envoy met Iraqi opposition leaders at Erbil, some 150 miles north of Halabja, Ansar played rough.
Read More...