You didn’t think I just spent my day at J Street, did you? In between panels I got some face time with two important aides to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki — Sadiq Rikabi, his political adviser, and Mohammad Salman, his reconciliation chief. I wrote it up for the Washington Independent. A sampling:

One thing that caught my attention was Salman’s assurances that the resettlement of displaced persons depended on people presenting documentation of owning their original homes. Were there problems with people claiming homes with insufficient documentation? After all, people ordered by a death squad to leave or be murdered may not have the presence of mind to grab their deeds. Salman, through his team of translators, said he was primarily seeing that problem manifest itself in Diyala, where 12,000 claims on property have been filed, but “we believe these claims are exaggerated,” and in some cases multiple people claim the same home. The reason is that Iraq tends to keep better records in cities like Baghdad than it does agricultural areas like Diyala, which was a prime battleground in the sectarian conflict.

“Diyala is difficult,” Salman conceded, and he was “trying to figure it out.” Like much of Iraq.