Photo: Cartoon by Gomaa at al Ahram Weekly.
REPORTS – LIFE IN IRAQ
Carnage and Rioting Hit Karbala
Two months into the U.S.-led Baghdad Security Plan, at least 289 people were killed and injured across Iraq on Saturday, including 36 dead in a car bomb attack in the holy Shiite city of Karbala. The carnage of a crowd teeming with women and children set off an angry mob of hundreds against the governor and police. The morning bombing outside a bus station and marketplace ripped through vendor stands near a Shiite shrine where the grandson of the prophet Mohammed is buried. Bodies littered the street and body parts were found as far as 160 yards from the site of the explosion. Three buses of passengers were charred and storefronts lay in shambles. At least 167 people were injured in the bombing, but the death toll was expected to increase because of still-unidentified bodies and serious injuries, said Saleem Kadhim, spokesman for the Karbala health directorate. As police and ambulances approached to carry away victims, angry residents shot at them, witnesses said. The police responded, firing bullets into the air to dissipate the angry crowd. As the bullets rained down, a child and elderly man were killed, witnesses said. A man screamed, "They added new victims and don't care about our losses. It's enough."
Under Siege: A Special Report From War-Torn Mosul
"If you go in the streets by yourself, you'll be dead in 15 minutes," says Khasro Goran, the deputy governor of Mosul, the second largest Iraqi city. An able, confident man, he speaks from experience, having survived more assassination attempts than almost any political leader in Iraq. The one-hour car journey to Goran's office from the Kurdish capital, Arbil, underlines the dangers. He has sent guards, many of them his relatives, to pick me up from my hotel. They travel in slightly battered civilian cars, chosen to blend in with the rest of the traffic, wear civilian jackets and T-shirts, and keep their weapons concealed. We drive at great speed across the Greater Zaab river, swollen with flood water, into the province of Nineveh, of which the ancient city of Mosul is the capital. The majority of its 1.8 million people are Sunni Arabs and one third are Kurds, along with 25,000 Christians. Arabs and Kurds have been fighting for control of the city for four years. Every day brings its harvest of dead. "Five Kurds were killed here yesterday," says one of the guards dolefully. The weapon of choice in Mosul these days is the vehicle-borne suicide bomb. We pass the headquarters of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), one of the two main Kurdish parties, where 19 people were killed by just such a bomb last year. I can see where a second suicide driver targeted another PUK branch office close to the light blue dome of a mosque in March, killing a further three people and wounding 20.
Civilian Claims On U.S. Suggest The Toll Of War
In February 2006, nervous American soldiers in Tikrit killed an Iraqi fisherman on the Tigris River after he leaned over to switch off his engine. A year earlier, a civilian filling his car and an Iraqi Army officer directing traffic were shot by American soldiers in a passing convoy in Balad, for no apparent reason. The incidents are among many thousands of claims submitted to the Army by Iraqi and Afghan civilians seeking payment for noncombat killings, injuries or property damage American forces inflicted on them or their relatives. The claims provide a rare window into the daily chaos and violence faced by civilians and troops in the two war zones. Recently, the Army disclosed roughly 500 claims to the American Civil Liberties Union in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. They are the first to be made public. They represent only a small fraction of the claims filed. In all, the military has paid more than $32 million to Iraqi and Afghan civilians for noncombat-related killings, injuries and property damage, an Army spokeswoman said. That figure does not include condolence payments made at a unit commander's discretion.
The paperwork, examined by The New York Times, provides unusually detailed accounts of how bystanders to the conflicts have become targets of American forces grappling to identify who is friend, who is foe. In the case of the fisherman in Tikrit, he and his companion desperately tried to appear unthreatening to an American helicopter overhead. "They held up the fish in the air and shouted 'Fish! Fish!' to show they meant no harm," said the Army report attached to the claim filed by the fisherman's family. The Army refused to compensate for the killing, ruling that it was "combat activity," but approved $3,500 for his boat, net and cell phone, which drifted away and were stolen. In the killings at the gas station in Balad, documents show that the Army determined that the neither of the dead Iraqis had done anything hostile or criminal, and approved $5,000 to the civilian's brother but nothing for the Iraqi officer.
In another incident, in 2005, an American soldier in a dangerous Sunni Arab area south of Baghdad killed a boy after mistaking his book bag for a bomb satchel. The Army paid the boy's uncle $500. The Foreign Claims Act, which governs such compensation, does not deal with combat-related cases. For those cases, including the boy's, the Army may offer a condolence payment as a gesture of regret with no admission of fault, of usually no higher than $2,500 per person killed. The total number of claims filed, or paid, is unclear, although extensive data has been provided in reports to Congress. There is no way to know immediately whether disciplinary action or prosecution has resulted from the cases.
A summary of the cases is online at www.aclu.org/civiliancasualties.
Shiites Keep Driving Sunnis From Homes
Nearly two months into a Baghdad security plan intended to calm the Iraqi capital by protecting residents from sectarian violence, Shiite Muslim militia members are still driving Sunni Muslims from religiously mixed neighborhoods. Iraqi soldiers, usually ethnic Kurds, reportedly have intervened in some instances to stop the militia campaign. But interviews with Sunni residents found that most of the efforts go unchallenged in a city where it's increasingly rare for Shiites or Sunnis to remain in neighborhoods that the other sect dominates. Residents displaced in the past four months describe a new effort that haunts them after they flee. It begins with intimidating phone calls, then escalates into bombings or the dismantling of Sunni homes. The residents said the perpetrators were members of the Mahdi Army militia, which is loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr. Sadr reportedly has told his followers to lie low and not challenge U.S. troops as they fan out across the capital. But that show of cooperation hasn't prevented the militia from trying to cement its grip on some formerly mixed-sect neighborhoods, residents report. Lt. Col Chris Garver, a U.S. military spokesman, didn't dispute that Mahdi Army members are still working to clear neighborhoods of Sunni residents. He said the security plan was in its early stages and that with three of five additional U.S. brigades now in Baghdad, there still weren't enough troops to halt illegal militia activities in every neighborhood.
Insurgents Distrust Displaced Sunni
Abu Ahmed al-Basri was ordered to leave his hometown of Basra by a Shia militia after the bombing of a holy Shia shrine in Samarra in February 2006 sparked ethnic violence throughout Iraq. The Sunni Muslim and his family, who have lived all their lives in the south, were reluctant to leave, but didn’t dare disobey the militiamen. Basri decided to take his family to Amiriya, a Sunni-majority neighbourhood in western Baghdad, expecting to be welcomed by his co-religionists. They loaded their furniture and belongings onto a truck and travelled 600 kilometres north. But the reception in Baghdad was anything but cordial - Sunni insurgents in charge of the area told Basri that he had to get their clearance before he could stay. For that, he would need a personal recommendation from a Sunni sponsor. Luckily, Basri found a friend of a friend who agreed to vouch for his family. They moved in, feeling safe at last. But it soon transpired that because he was new in the area, the insurgents did not trust Basri and suspected him of working for the Shia-dominated Iraqi government. The family was harassed and pestered by unsolicited visits from insurgents.
………Sunni insurgents also distrust Sunni who have entered mixed marriages with Shia, suspecting that the Sunni spouse will sympathise with the Shia and work for the government. Such marriages are common - the authorities estimate two million of the 6.5 million marriages in Iraq are between Sunni and Shia, according to the United Nations reporting service IRIN. Ahmed al-Janabi, who is married to a Shia and is from the majority Sunni suburb of al-Dora, was shocked to see graffiti on the gate of his garage when he left for work one morning. "Get out of here, traitor," said the message. Janabi, a taxi driver and father of four, took the warning seriously. He had witnessed enough abductions and murders to know that such graffiti was not a joke. "If we ignore it, it might cost us our lives," he said. Um Khalid, Janabi's wife, wanted to investigate the threat and went to the nearby mosque, where Sunni insurgents are know to be based. But the imam there said he was unable to help. When Um Khalid left the mosque, a neighbour approached her and told her the insurgents had acted because she was a Shia and questioned her husband’s loyalties. The insurgents, he said, feared Janabi might give away information to his wife's Shia relatives or to the government. The neighbour strongly suggested the family leave the area.
Police Linked to Tel Afar Reprisals
Though the sight was gruesome, Khattab Majid had no choice but to examine the pile of dead bodies assembled outside Tal Afar hospital. He hoped to find six members of his family who had been kidnapped and executed by gunmen, according to neighbours. “I will kill all Safawi Shia (a reference to Shia from Iran who are frequently accused of being behind attacks in Iraq). I will take revenge for shedding the blood of every innocent Sunni,” he declared, as he searched for his relatives. Late last month, the Iraqi town of Tal Afar near the Syrian border witnessed carnage that even by Iraqi standards was extraordinarily cruel. At least 182 people were killed and more than 200 injured when on March 27 two trucks, carrying bags of flour, exploded in a busy market in a poor Shia neighbourhood - the deadliest single strike since the fall of the former regime four years ago. The death toll rose as bodies continued to be pulled out under the debris of collapsed houses. The bombing, for which al-Qaeda later claimed responsibility, then sparked a series of revenge killings. According to Duraed Kashmoola, the governor of Nineveh province, Shia militias in cooperation with members of the police blocked the road to the Wihda Sunni district south of Tal Afar and killed 60 Sunni residents, injured 30 and kidnapped 40, in retaliation for the bombings. A small child told an IWPR reporter how he lost his family when Shia militants raided homes in the Sunni neighbourhood. Abdul-Qadir Khalil, just seven years of age, only survived because he was hiding under his bed when gunmen broke into his parents’ house. Before they had heard shouting and screaming from their neighbour’s house, then gunfire and silence.
One More Achievement
It looks I will never finish writing about the achievements of our great government. Excuse me dear readers but I think I have the right to feel proud that we have such great government supported by the great administration of Great Bush. Well, let me go directly to the point. I just would like to tell you that this is the 7th day that we don’t have water in our neighborhood. Yes, we don’t have water and we have to use the water pumps to get water and if any house could get it by the pump, the other houses would never be able to have because it looks that Baghdad municipality cants pump enough quantity of water to fill the pipes. I think because the municipality is really busy with other projects which are more important than providing water like painting the pavement. Hey did I tell you that we are the country number 1 in painting the pavements. Baghdad municipality paints the pavements almost every season.
REPORTS – IRAQI MILITIAS, POLITICIANS, POWER BROKERS
Iraqi Group “Seize 20 Police”
Al-Qaeda in Iraq has said its fighters have kidnapped 20 Iraqi soldiers and policemen in northeast Baghdad. In an internet statement released on Saturday, the self-styled Islamic State of Iraq said the men would be killed unless the government released all Sunni women held in Iraq's prisons within 48 hours. The group also posted still images showing the purported captives dressed in brown army and blue police uniforms, blindfolded and handcuffed. The movement's claim to have captured the men could not be independently verified. The group demanded the release of "Muslim Sunni sisters who are in the prisons of the interior" ministry, in the statement posted on a website used by Iraqi armed groups. "The Islamic State of Iraq gives the government of [Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki] 48 hours to meet its demands or it will execute the rule of God on them," it said. The Iraqi government has not yet responded to the group's claim or to its demands.
Paliament Suicide Bomber 'Was Sunni MP's Bodyguard'
A suspected suicide bomber blew himself up in the Iraqi parliament cafeteria in an assault in the heart of the heavily fortified, US-protected Green Zone today, killing at least eight people including three politicians, the American military said. Iraqi officials said the bomber struck the cafeteria while several politicians were eating lunch. State television said at least 30 people were wounded. Security officials at parliament, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to release the information, said they believed the suicide bomber was a bodyguard of a Sunni member of parliament who was not among the dead. They would not name the member of parliament. The officials also said two satchel bombs were found inside the building near the dining hall. A US military bomb squad was called and took the explosives away and detonated them without incident.
Iraqi Government Gives Out Cash To Returning Families
The Iraqi government is giving out a cash inducement of one million Iraqi dinars (about US $800) to each displaced family in Baghdad willing to return to their original home, the country’s Displacement and Migration Ministry said on Thursday. “The cabinet endorsed the decision this week upon a request from the Minister of Displacement and Migration and it is in effect right now,” Sattar Nawroz, the ministry’s spokesman, told IRIN. “Only Baghdad families are covered by this in the frame of Baghdad’s new security plan [Operation Imposing Law]. Joint committees with interior and defence ministries have been formed to follow up,” Nawroz said. He added that about 10,000 individuals had returned to their homes since the US-led security clampdown was launched in Baghdad on 14 February. Iraq’s relentless sectarian violence between the country’s two major Muslim sects, Sunnis and Shias, can be traced to 22 February, 2006, when a revered Shia shrine in Samarra, 100km north of Baghdad, was bombed. Sunni extremists were blamed for the act.
Kurds See Political Motive Behind Border Closure
The closure of a major crossing point on the Iraq-Iran border two months ago is an attempt by the government to undermine the Iraqi-Kurdistan region, some senior Kurdish figures believe. Hundreds of mainly Kurdish traders have lost substantial sums of money, since the Munthiriya crossing was closed on February 15. As well as losses incurred from not being able to deliver goods to customers, the traders are also paying to keep their merchandise in storage. All entry points into Iraq were shut as part of the Iraqi government’s efforts to support the new Baghdad security plan - a joint US-Iraqi operation to secure and stabilise the capital, launched more than a month ago. Border posts were soon re-opened, with one exception - Munthiriya, the only official crossing point between Iraq and Iran in the Kurdistan region, which is only opened only for fuel deliveries. Kurds now suspect ulterior political motives behind the closure of this crossing point, so vital to Kurdish economic interests.
Iraqis Mourn Loss of Storied Baghdad Bridge
An elderly man sat on a chair in front of his house, lamenting the loss of yet another piece of his past. A short distance away, the skeletal remains of the Sarafiya Bridge dangled over the Tigris River. Focus on the steel-frame bridge, where a truck bomber killed at least 10 people early Thursday, was quickly diverted by the lunch-time attack at the heavily guarded parliament building. That's not unusual in Iraq, where brutal mornings often give way to uglier afternoons. But to those who lived near the fallen bridge, the loss was as heartbreaking as a death in the family. Not only did the structure serve as a symbol of better times, when children frolicked in the water below and trains chugged along its railway tracks. It was an icon that had endured in a place where many have perished. Since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, Iraqis have watched their historical treasures fall to the ensuing chaos. The capital's National Museum was beset by looters as Saddam Hussein fled, and ancient treasures were lost. Archeological sites have been picked over by robbers looking to profit from sales of antiquities. Mosques have been bombed. The storied Mutanabi Street book market in Baghdad was ripped apart by a bomb last month, one of several famous bazaars that have been targeted.
REPORTS – US/UK/OTHERS IN IRAQ
Kurdistan's Covert Back-Channels
In June 2004, journalist Seymour Hersh reported in the New Yorker that Israelis operating in northern Iraq under the guise of businessmen were in fact cultivating Kurdish proxies to gather intelligence in preparation for possible future action against Iran. About the same time, I too was hearing about Israelis operating in Kurdish northern Iraq. First, from a former senior American diplomat who was invited by an Israeli American businessman to advise the Kurds on how to get billions of dollars they believed they were owed from the Saddam Hussein-era United Nations Oil-for-Food program. The diplomat gave me the Israeli’s name—Shlomi Michaels—and phone numbers for Michaels in Beverly Hills, Turkey, and Israel. The diplomat had walked away from the project, put off by Michaels’ temper, and also, he said, by doubts about what Michaels was really up to, and who he might really be working for. So I was intrigued when, last summer, I read in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that Shlomi Michaels had become the subject of an Israeli government investigation for allegedly operating in Iraq without the required authorization from the Israeli authorities. Not only had I known about Michaels for two years, I had spent about as long trying to understand if the Bush administration would embrace the regime-change policy of its Iran hawks, who believe that the solution to Iran’s nuclear ambitions is to promote mass uprisings of ethnic minority and dissident groups such as the Kurds. For much of the past year, I have been digging into the story of Shlomi Michaels’ operations in Kurdistan, and his connections in Israel, the United States, and around the world. My investigation took me to Israel early last fall, shortly after the Israeli war with Hezbollah, to talk with Israeli officials investigating Michaels, as well as one of Michaels’ long-time American associates, and Michaels’ business partner, the former Mossad chief Danny Yatom.
Twenty Shia Gunmen Die in British Basra Fightback
British forces have hit back at Iraqi insurgents who killed six colleagues last week, by launching an operation in which they shot dead more than 20 gunmen of Basra's rogue militias. The attack began when a battalion-size force was sent into one of the southern city's toughest terrorist strongholds, three miles from where four soldiers, including two women, were blown up in their Warrior armoured vehicle. An armoured force of 400 troops from the 2Bn The Rifles and 2Bn The Duke of Lancaster's Regiment, both of which suffered fatalities last week, entered the Shia Flats area on the western outskirts of Basra to search for hidden weapons. The district is notorious as one of the most dangerous in southern Iraq. "We wanted to make quite clear there's nowhere in Basra we cannot go," a British commander told The Daily Telegraph yesterday. "We are prepared to be there in daylight and take whatever comes our way. We are not being bombed out or intimidated."
War Pimp Alert: U.S. Says Iraqi Militiamen Being Trained in Iran
Iranian intelligence operatives have been training Iraqi fighters inside Iran on how to use and assemble deadly roadside bombs known as EFPs, the U.S. military spokesman said Wednesday. Commanders of a splinter group inside the Shiite Mahdi Army militia have told The Associated Press that there are as many as 4,000 members of their organization that were trained in Iran and that they have stockpiles of EFPs, a weapon that causes great uneasiness among U.S. forces here because they penetrate heavily armored vehicles. U.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell would not say how many militia fighters had been trained in Iran but said that questioning of fighters captured as recently as this month confirmed many had been in Iranian training camps. ''We know that they are being in fact manufactured and smuggled into this country, and we know that training does go on in Iran for people to learn how to assemble them and how to employ them. We know that training has gone on as recently as this past month from detainees debriefs,'' Caldwell said at a weekly briefing. EFP stands for explosively formed penetrator, deadly roadside bombs that hurl a fist-size lump of molten copper capable of piercing armor. In January, U.S. officials said at least 170 U.S. soldiers had been killed by EFPs. Caldwell also said the U.S. military had evidence that Iranian intelligence agents were active in Iraq in funding, training and arming Shiite militia fighters.
FROM THE WAR IN CONTEXT blog:
Iran giving arms to Iraq's Sunnis, U.S. military says
The chief U.S. military spokesman in Iraq asserted Wednesday that Iranian-made arms, manufactured as recently as last year, have reached Sunni insurgents here, which if true would mark a new development in the four-year-old conflict. Citing testimony from detainees in U.S. custody, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell said Iranian intelligence operatives were backing the Sunni militants inside Iraq while at the same time training Shiite extremists in Iran. "We have, in fact, found some cases recently where Iranian intelligence services have provided to some Sunni insurgent groups some support," Caldwell told reporters, adding that he was aware of only Shiite extremists being trained inside Iran. Caldwell cited a collection of munitions on a nearby table that he said were made in Iran and found two days ago in a majority-Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad. [complete article]
Comment -- So what's the U.S. military up to now? Attempting to give the insurgents and Iran false confidence by cunningly reinforcing the impression that the Americans are clueless? – from Paul Woodward, who runs the War In Context blog.
My Answer: they are clueless, it’s not an act.
COMMENTARY
War on Terror, Culture of Fear
The still raging and escalating war on terror, in whose name people are killed, governments are destroyed, and international organisations are undermined, is also exacting a more far-reaching and pernicious toll. It is sewing corruption, perverting facts, falsifying history, spreading chaos, pinning prejudicial labels on human beings and redefining civilisation. We thought we knew so much about it, but it is becoming more apparent that we've barely seen the tip of the iceberg. We knew that it was an evil war, in its aims and means, like most wars. We know now that it is a global war, as Bush had predicted and probably planned. Europe and a part of the Middle East were the theatres of World War I. Europe, Asia and the Middle East were the theatres of World War II. In the current world war being waged by President Bush and his sidekick Tony Blair nowhere is safe.
……..One of the most profound and insidious aspects of this exceptional war is the culture of fear it is spreading. "The 'war on terror' has created a culture of fear in America," wrote Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security advisor to Jimmy Carter, in The Washington Post of 25 March. "The Bush administration's elevation of these three words into a national mantra since the horrific events of 9/11 has had a pernicious impact on American democracy, on America's psyche and on US standing in the world. Using this phrase has actually undermined our ability to effectively confront the real challenges we face from fanatics who may use terrorism against us. The damage these three words have done ... is infinitely greater than any wild dreams entertained by the fanatical perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks when they were plotting against us in distant Afghan caves." Yet the impact of this on Egyptians, Arabs and Muslims is far worse.
The war on terror has disseminated fear everywhere. Fear is a much greater threat to nations than the most lethal weapons. Fear numbs the mind and sparks the weakest, most cowardly and basest instincts. It makes people easy prey to the whims and follies of demagogues and dictators. It was by playing on fear that Bush could mount his invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. Whenever his project bogs down or he comes under fire, Bush instructs his aides to drum up people's fear of another terrorist attack. This was the climate that smoothed the passage of the Patriot Act and the erosion of civil and personal liberties under government surveillance and secret detentions. This act, moreover, set the model for other governments, which never would have dared introduce a law like it before. Now that the greatest democracy on earth has it, it has become the right of every ruler on earth to impose a patriot act of his own; in our case, to make it an eternal constitutional cornerstone and perpetual font of legislation. The perpetuation of fear has turned back the tide of democracy, stymied the march of liberty, and let absolute rulers rule more absolutely.
Quote of the day: "To initiate a war of aggression . . . is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." - Nuremberg Tribunal
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