Iraqis

Nearly four years ago, Congress created a special program that set aside 5,000 visas annually for five years to help Iraqis who risked their lives working alongside U.S. troops and diplomats to resettle in this country. These were people who worked as translators, as drivers or in other jobs helping Americans in the war, and many of them faced anger and even threats of violence as a result. But though the program was greeted with fanfare and relief when it was passed, federal officials now acknowledge that the Special Immigrant Visa program is languishing.

BAGHDAD - Iraqi security used disproportionate force, including shooting unarmed civilians, during a raid on an encampment of Sunni Arab protesters last week that left 45 people dead, according to two government investigations and foreign diplomats. The predawn raid in the city of Hawija in Kirkuk province April 23 involved security forces demanding that protesters hand over demonstrators suspected of killing an Iraqi soldier four days earlier, officials said. Shooting erupted during the raid, enraging Sunnis and leading to violence in other parts of the country.

Cars breezed by the trimmed green hedges and flowers of Baghdad's Nisoor Square on Friday, while pedestrians strolled past billboards of smiling men and women promoting national elections. Little trace was left of the September 2007 day when Blackwater security guards opened fire on the crowded intersection, killing 17 civilians. On Thursday, a judge in a U.S. federal court had thrown out the criminal prosecution of five Blackwater guards involved in the shootings. The consequences of that decision were still being felt Friday by survivors of the attack, politicians and ordinary Iraqis, who expressed feelings of helplessness at the hands of the United States.

BAGHDAD - Shiite-dominated areas in southern and central Iraq were rocked Monday by car bomb explosions that killed at least 22 people and fueled fears that the country is sliding into a civil war. The violence occurred as Iraqi security forces surrounded the Sunni cities of Ramadi and Fallouja demanding that the area's tribes hand over those responsible for killing five Iraqi soldiers over the weekend. Authorities gave the tribes 48 hours. The deadline passed, but Jaber Jabri, a member of parliament from Ramadi, said late Monday that a tentative deal had been reached to defuse the situation.

Bombs and mortars pounded Baghdad Sunday morning, killing at least 27 people and wounding more than 40, as Iraqis dodged explosions to cast their votes. The first blasts echoed across the capital before 7 a.m. and continued until close to noon, casting a pall on the day Iraqis voted for their second four-year government since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. In western Anbar provinces, explosions jolted the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi, but no casualties were reported. The Islamic State of Iraq, a radical umbrella group that includes Al Qaeda, had declared a curfew for election day and threatened death to all those who headed to the polls.

As the United States winds down its military role in Iraq, on Friday it turned over its last detainee in the country to Iraqi authorities, but not without serious concerns. The Obama administration had been trying to convince the Iraqi government for months to allow the extradition of Ali Mussa Daqduq, a suspected Hezbollah operative, to the U.S. for trial. Daqduq is accused of orchestrating a 2007 kidnapping that resulted in the killing of five U.S. military personnel. But ultimately, Baghdad would not cooperate.

Bomb blasts, torture and years of exile had all but ruined the Azeez family of Iraq. So the news sounded promising: Their refugee application had been approved. Abdul, his wife, Haifaa, and their four adult children were coming to America. The family of Mandeans, a persecuted religious minority in Iraq, had left behind almost everything in their Baghdad home but planned to create a new life in El Cajon. One year later, Abdul, 49, fiddles with worry beads as he paces in his two-bedroom town house.

Tens of thousands of supporters of an anti-U.S. cleric burned an effigy of former President George W. Bush on Thursday and demanded that U.S. troops leave Iraq, in a rally marking the sixth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad to U.S. forces. Cleric Muqtada Sadr, whose Shiite Muslim militia fought U.S. troops intermittently until a cease-fire was declared last May, had called on Iraqis to turn out for the protest at Firdos Square, where a statue of Saddam Hussein was toppled on April 9, 2003.

The security firm formerly known as Blackwater has reached a settlement in seven civil lawsuits filed against it by families of Iraqis killed during what the suits called "senseless slaughter" by company guards. In an unrelated shooting involving Blackwater guards in Afghanistan in May, two former employees of the North Carolina-based security contractor were charged Thursday with killing two Afghan civilians after a traffic incident. The legal developments came a week after a federal judge dismissed manslaughter charges against five Blackwater guards charged with killing at least 14 civilians in Baghdad's Nisoor Square in September 2007.

While under death threats from insurgents in Baghdad last year, Tariq Abu Khumra mailed a prized possession to his girlfriend in California: a huge American flag signed by 50 American military officers whom Khumra had served as an interpreter for theU.S. military. Kohima was afraid the flag would get him killed if the wrong people found it at his home in Baghdad. Insurgents had already marked him for assassination, even though he had lost his interpreter job when U.S. militarybases in Iraq shut down last fall.

BAGHDAD - Four Iraqi soldiers were shot dead Saturday, the day after Sunni Arab tribes in the restive western province of Anbar announced that they had formed their own army to defend themselves against the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government. The deadly attack came as Sunni gunmen around Iraq clashed with government forces in the aftermath of a government crackdown on Sunni demonstrators Tuesday in northern Iraq. More than 200 people died last week in fighting between Sunnis and Iraqi security forces.

BEIRUT - After a week of violence, Iraq held its first provincial elections Saturday since the departure of U.S. troops last year. Results are not expected for several days, but the conditions under which the vote was held showed that little has changed since the exit of the Americans, who shaped Iraq's current electoral process after leading the 2003 invasion that ousted longtime President Saddam Hussein. Saturday's polling was held amid visible discontent among voters, with balloting delayed in several provinces and vehicular traffic again banned in big cities in an effort to avoid deadly attacks as in every Iraqi election since 2005.

During his 30-year reign in Iraq, Saddam Hussein repeatedly plunged the country into war, even transforming an ancestral marshland some say is the "historical" Garden of Eden into a battleground. To punish political enemies, Hussein built canals with names such as Mother of Battles to drain water from marshlands and sap the lifeblood of the Marsh Arabs, a community of indigenous Iraqis who depended on the swamp to survive. An ecosystem twice the size of the Everglades became a desert of salt and sand.

BAGHDAD - Ten years after the U.S.-led invasion to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, the geopolitical winner of the war appears to be their common enemy: Iran. American military forces are long gone, and Iraqi officials say Washington's political influence in Baghdad is now virtually nonexistent. Hussein is dead. But Iran has become an indispensable broker among Baghdad's new Shiite elite, and its influence continues to grow. The signs are evident in the prominence of pro-Iran militias on the streets, at public celebrations and in the faces of some of those now in the halls of power, men such as Abu Mehdi Mohandis, an Iraqi with a long history of anti-American activity and deep ties to Iran.

When American troops went to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, they relied on local translators, drivers and guides to help them navigate incalculable risks. In exchange, the United States promised, beginning in 2006, to provide visas for those men and women whose work put them in danger. But nearly a decade later, it has yet to fulfill that commitment. Washington must live up to its obligations. A good place to start would be for Congress and the White House to move swiftly to extend the Special Immigrant Visa program, which is due to expire in the months ahead.

RAMADI, Iraq - Ali Ouda doesn't leave his birthplace anymore. His knees wobble and cataracts fog his brown eyes. He can't remember his age. Some say he must be 115 years old, but he doesn't look a day over 90. No one really knows. Ouda's days repeat: He wakes up, prays in bed, waits for his sons to sit with him, and then strolls around the fields he has known since childhood, wearing his dishdasha and black and white headdress. He chats with neighbors. His world consists of the immediate area around his farm in the small rural community of Jazeera, at the edge of Ramadi.

Eleven Iraqis carrying false passports and heading to California were arrested at Monterrey's airport, Mexican immigration officials said. The nine men, a woman and a 2-year-old girl had traveled from Madrid. None of the Iraqis appear on terrorist watch lists, and they told authorities they were Chaldean Christians trying to get to California, where they would request asylum, an official said.

Reporting from Camp Pendleton -- The former Marine officer who gave Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich the order to "clear" an Iraqi house near the site of an explosion that had just killed a Marine testified Friday that he expected Wuterich and his squad to "kill or capture the enemy I thought was in that building. " William Kallop, who was a lieutenant in 2005 and is now a stockbroker in New York, said he believed insurgents inside the house were firing on Marines and thus the house could be deemed "hostile.

A Sunni Muslim lawmaker was killed Tuesday by a suicide bomber in the restive stretches of western Iraq, two days after another Sunni official survived a bombing in the same area. Ifan Saadoun Issawi was on his way to attend protests against the government when he was slain in Fallouja, Anbar province Gov. Qassim Fahdawi told the Associated Press. He was reportedly from the same tribe and political bloc as Rafia Issawi, the Sunni finance minister targeted Sunday. Issawi was not harmed.

SAN DIEGO - The husband of an Iraqi immigrant fatally beaten in the family home in El Cajon has been arrested and charged in her death, police said Friday. The killing in March was a case of domestic violence, not a hate crime, as a note found near the body had suggested, El Cajon Police Chief Jim Redman said at a news conference. Kassim Al-Himidi, 48, was arrested Thursday night on suspicion of murder after being asked to come to the police station. Al-Himidi's wife, Shaima Alawadi, 32, the mother of five children, was found bludgeoned and unconscious March 21 and died three days later.