Stumbled across this page just this morning, and what a pleasant surprise. Tastier even, for some reason, for the fact that it came from a local paper. Can't get much different than the San Diego Union-Tribute! Hat's off to these fine reporters and photographers.
Whatever you do, don't miss the audio slideshow on the page above. Simply outstanding!
A taste of the article:
It was their day.
At the polling stations — mostly schools that the Marines had rebuilt and painted bright green and blue against the city's dingy beige — volunteer Iraqi election workers guided voters through paces most had only dreamed about.
"This is a new birth for Iraqis," said Najaf resident Kasim Kadum Saagban, 45, after workers helped him and his wife vote in the bullet-ridden Medina section of the Old City.
Just a few blocks away stood the revered Imam Ali Mosque, which was the epicenter of a fierce battle between Marines and local militia just six months before. In the interlude, the Marines and locals had joined hands to start rebuilding damaged quarters of the city, paid thousands of residents injured in the fighting, and were holding together a fragile working peace that allowed the elections to happen without bloodshed.
With his forearm taut and sure, Saaban proudly held up his finger, stained with purple ink, in a pose that has become synonymous with the election.
"Iraq is changed forever," he said, eyes wide and voice shaking with intensity.
But despite such euphoria and confidence, Najaf's rise from a city mired in violence to an emerging beacon of peace could still be as fragile as a house of cards.
"If we're not careful," warned Col. Anthony Haslam, the Marines' top commander, "it can all go away, just like that."
'America doesn't get to see this side'
In Najaf, where the Marines seemed to have more friends than enemies, the calm on election day and stability in the days that followed signaled a victory of sorts. The 2,200 Camp Pendleton Marines stationed in the southern Iraqi city of Najaf could say they were leaving Najaf better than they found it.
After two other assignments covering the Marines in Iraq — first during the 2003 invasion two years ago and then again during the first siege of Fallujah last spring — no experience was as surprising as our third and most recent trip to Najaf and its surrounding region, where the American effort seemed to be working.
Arriving in Najaf in mid-January, North County Times photographer Hayne Palmour and I found a city marked more by peace, cooperation and bustling reconstruction than by war.
While a bloody, pivotal battle in August left parts of the city in ruins and many residents maimed or killed, the Marines' legacy in Najaf also included dozens of new schools, a functioning local government, and enough local police that the governor generally asked the American troops to stay out of sight.
"It's funny that America doesn't get to see this side," said one young Marine lieutenant when a group of Iraqi men waved and cheered at his patrol of Marine Humvees passing a cafe along the banks of the jade-colored Euphrates River.
The progress in Najaf could be an anomaly, one that will be difficult or impossible to duplicate in other regions of the country. Or it could be a good example of what could happen in Iraq when the enemy fades, and when peace presents a new set of challenges and opportunities.
As the power base for the Shiite coalition that will dominate the new government and write Iraq's next constitution and as a relative success story for the U.S. occupation, all eyes are on Najaf to see if the peaceful gains the Marines and local residents made there will hold.
"That's key terrain down there," Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. general in Baghdad, told the Army commanders who replaced the Marines there in February.
"Don't lose it," he said.
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