News & Views 05/18/07

Photo: Mohammed Ihssan, age 7, is treated for injuries in Kirkuk, Iraq, Friday, May 18, 2007. Mohammed was wounded when unknown gunmen opened fire on a police vehicle, killing a policeman and injuring his brother, while he was playing nearby. (AP Photo/Emad Matti)

REPORTS – LIFE IN IRAQ

The Street Orphans of Baghdad

Orphans like Fatema, selling incense for pennies, aren't hard to find on Baghdad's streets. At 11 years old, dodging cars, she's barely more than a beggar, CBS News correspondent Mark Strassmann reports. "We're orphans," Fatema says. Why don't they go to school? "Because we need the money," she says. Baghdad has thousands of orphans — no one knows the exact number. There are too many for the eight orphanages in Iraq's capital city. Some facilities crowd 10 kids to a small bedroom. Other than the orphanages, will anyone take these children? "No," says Quammer al-Janni, who coordinates orphan programs for the Red Crescent, the Arab Red Cross. The Iraqi government does little to help. In Iraqi culture, orphans are mostly scorned — and seldom adopted. They're scared. Many of them are angry — and more violent than other kids.

Iraqis in "besieged" city struggle to survive

Abu Mahmoud says an 11-day curfew in the Iraqi city of Samarra has pushed his family's survival skills to the limit as supplies of food, medicine and fuel dwindle alarmingly. "There is no electricity, no water, no schools and no hospitals. Samarra has turned into a city for the dead," the 65-year-old father of three said. Since U.S. and Iraqi forces imposed a curfew and sealed off the city following a suicide bomb attack that killed 12 police officers on May 6, residents are struggling to find basic goods. The curfew has been eased since. But many residents said ways in to the city were still blocked. Some shops have closed, a doctor in the main hospital said patients were dying because of a lack of fuel for generators and people were using wooden boats in the Tigris river to ferry foodstuff and the wounded to a nearby town. The bombing, which killed Samarra's police chief Abdul-Jelil al-Dulaimi, also damaged the city's power grid and main water pipe, triggering electricity and water shortages. "The humanitarian situation in Samarra is terrible. Many have already run out of food and hospitals have closed because of an absence in power and medicine," said an Iraqi Red Crescent worker in the nearby town of Tikrit who asked not to be named. U.S. and Iraqi forces turned back three aid trucks the organisation had sent to Samarra in an effort to ease the plight of the city's 300,000 residents, the worker said.

……..A doctor working in Samarra's main hospital said 10 people, including seven infants, had already died because of lack of fuel to power generators and operate life-saving machinery. "The young and the elderly are most at risk. On one day, four new-born babies died because there was no energy to power incubators," he said on condition of anonymity, fearing arrest.

Death in Iraq spawns grim subcultures

Abdullah Jassim expected ambulances and security forces to arrive first after a blast last month near his clothing shop. Instead, it was thieves. "I saw them with my own eyes," said Jassim, who has survived a string of suicide bombings in Baghdad's well-known Shurja market. "Young men between 20 and 30 years old stole mobile phones, money and wrist watches from the dead and badly hurt." The consequences of sudden and violent death — so commonplace in Iraq’s relentless turmoil — have spawned their own macabre subcultures: the human vultures, grave markers with serial numbers for unidentified victims, tattoo artists asked to etch IDs on people afraid of becoming an unclaimed body amid the carnage and killings. It's more than just another grim tableau in a nation brimming with sad stories. It points to how deeply war and sectarian bloodshed have reordered the way Iraqis live — and confront the constant possibility of death. "As a society, we are finished," said Jassim, whose store is only several dozen yards from the site of a car bomb that killed at least 127 people and wounded 148 on April 18. "We may have hit rock bottom."

………..Much of the sectarian violence in Baghdad has been blamed on Sunni militants or death squads linked to the Shiite Mahdi Army militia of anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The bodies of the victims — handcuffed, showing signs of torture and with execution-style gunshot wounds — are routinely found in deserted areas, garbage dumps or floating in the Tigris river. Ironically, the men in Najaf and Karbala who volunteer to administer the ritual washing of bodies — part of the Islamic burial rites — and pray for their souls are often volunteers from the Mahdi Army. "The Mahdi Army has played a pioneering role in this humanitarian task," boasted Sheik Abdullah al-Karbalai, a 32-year-old Shiite cleric from Karbala and a supporter of al-Sadr. Al-Karbalai has overseen the burial of about 3,000 sectarian violence victims, many of them in land he said was purchased by al-Sadr for that purpose.

From Roads to Iraq blog: Occupation forces arrested 900

- Occupation forces in their disparate attempt to find any information about their missing soldiers arrested 900 citizens from Al-yousfioya city, reported on Nahrainnet. Al- yousfiya is a very small city; if this report is true then they arrested every male in the city. Farmers in the suburbs of the city still insist that they found non-Iraqis decapitated heads of “three” people in the river, also they reported that they found a US army bag in the river.

Four Arrested in Honor Killing

Authorities in northern Iraq have arrested four people in connection with the "honor killing" last month of a Kurdish teen -- a startling, morbid pummeling caught on a mobile phone video camera and broadcast around the world. The case portrays the tragedy and brutality of honor killings in the Muslim world. Honor killings take place when family members kill relatives, almost always female, because they feel the relatives' actions have shamed the family. …..Two of the four arrested are members of the victim's family, police in Nineveh province said Thursday. Four others, including a cousin thought to have instigated the killing, are being sought. The killing is said to have spurred the killings of about two dozen Yazidi men by Sunni Muslims in the Mosul area two weeks later. Attackers affiliated with al Qaeda pulled 24 Yazidi men out of a bus and slaughtered them, a provincial official said. The violence ratcheted up tensions between Yazids and Muslims in Bashiqa, the victim's hometown, a largely Yazidi city in Nineveh province.

REPORTS – IRAQI MILITIAS, POLITICIANS, POWER BROKERS

Saboteurs have upper hand in an endless war

Iraq's Oil Minister has unequalled experience of adversity. As a leading Iraqi nuclear scientist, Dr Hussain al-Shahristani was summoned to see Saddam Hussein in 1979 and asked to assist in a project to make a nuclear weapon. He flatly refused to help and was immediately thrown into jail and savagely tortured by being beaten for 22 days as he was hung in the air by his wrists that were tied behind his back. Adamant in his determination not to assist Saddam in developing a nuclear device Dr Shahristani spent 10 years in solitary confinement in a small windowless cell in Abu Ghraib prison. During the chaos of the Gulf War he succeeded in escaping with the help of a "trusty" who delivered his meals. The man, a Palestinian jailed by Saddam as a favour to Yasser Arafat, agreed to help him get out of the dreaded Abu Ghraib.

Stealing a Mukhabarat (secret police) car, the scientist made his way to Kurdistan and then to Iran. Sitting in his office in the Oil Ministry on a surprisingly rainy day in Baghdad, Dr Shahristani carries few outward signs of a life beset by danger and suffering. Following the overthrow of Saddam in 2003 he returned to Iraq and became the leader of the independent members of parliament who belonged to the Shia alliance. He became Oil Minister a year ago. It is not an easy job. Iraq's only revenue is from the 1.6 million barrels a day of crude oil that the country exports out of the 2.2 million barrels a day it produces. Every day saboteurs blow up Iraqi oil pipelines and Oil Ministry teams try to repair them in an endless war to strangle Iraq's oil exports to the Mediterranean. Right now the saboteurs have, perhaps temporarily, the upper hand. "It is as bad as it has ever been," says Dr Shahristani in an interview with The Independent. "If we can protect the pipeline we can add half a million barrels to our exports immediately."

Maliki and Sadr

American troops entering Baghdad on April 9, 2003 noted the strange quiet that enveloped large parts of the city. While Baathist gunmen continued to launch spoiling raids north of the the city, large segments of the population remained calm. This was particularly true in the largest Shia neighborhoods to the east, where Baghdad’s population seemed almost eerily nonchalant about the American victory. Two days later, and at the express orders of their enterprising commanding officer, two Arabic-speaking American lieutenants were escorted by a small fireteam of U.S. soldiers into the heart of the newly renamed Sadr City. Their assignment was to listen to Friday prayers — and give an assessment of the mood of the city’s Shia population.

What they heard should have warned American leaders that they faced an organized movement that was dedicated to redressing the wrongs of the Saddam era. A disciplined militia, clothed in black, had been deployed along the major thoroughfares of Sadr City to keep order, the lieutenants reported. The lightly armed militia was under the control of a fiery, young and charismatic leader name Moqtada al-Sadr. The lieutenants reported that al-Sadr was responsible for shaping the message of the the open-air sermons they heard that day: that all Iraqis must live by Islamic law, that all Iraqis must oppose foreign domination, that Iraqi clerics living in Iranian exile were not qualified to lead the people, that clerics not born in Iraq were not fit to speak on Iraq’s future, and that “Allah and not the United States has freed us.”

……….The U.S. military has also made claims that Iranian arms are entering Iraq through networks tied to Sadr. American officials also point out, accurately, that Moqtada al-Sadr is threatening to pull out of the Iraqi government coalition unless Maliki sets a date for the American withdrawal. How does this square with Moqtada al-Sadr’s claim that he is not a puppet of the Tehran government? “The Americans pick their friends and their friends stay their friends until they are betrayed,” a Sadrist says of these reports. “His eminence there from the south [referring to Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim] was seen in the White House. He is very close to Iran. But would you accuse him of receiving arms from Iran? Of course not. After all, he has shaken the hand of George Bush. So now it is in America’s interest to say that Moqtada al-Sadr and his followers are in the pockets of the Iranians and not Hakim. But which do you really think it is?” Do the Americans have Maliki right? Will the current Prime Minister crack down on Moqtada al-Sadr’s militia, or will he continue to walk a fine line?

Shi’a Rivalries

The struggle for power between the Shi'a organizations at the local level in Iraq has led to clashes between well-armed fighters, and between the Mahdi Army and local security forces, often loyal to rival militias. The rivalry between Iraq’s various Shi'a movements extends back even to the rule of Saddam Hussein, but has come to open hostilities more frequently in recent weeks than at any time since the 2003 US invasion. The fighting concerns some of the most powerful organizations in Iraq, including the SIIC (formerly SCIRI), run by Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim, which enjoys the largest number of seats in the ruling party and commands the Badr militia. SIIC also controls several local and provincial governments in Iraq’s Shi'a areas. Other organizations, such as the Fadhila party, do not have the same national presence, but control local strongholds, such as the group’s provincial base in Basra. Remarkably, the Mahdi Army has picked up its arms against rival Iraqi Shi'a groups while it has not taken the bait of al-Qa'ida and other Sunni militant attackers to come out in force against Iraqi Sunnis -- even though al-Qa'ida and Sunni militant groups are directly responsible for many more deaths of Sadrist supporters and Iraqi Shi'a since the start of the security plan in mid-February.

REPORTS – US/UK/OTHERS IN IRAQ

Islamic nations urge Iraq withdrawal

Foreign ministers from Muslim nations called Thursday on international forces to pull out of Iraq as soon as possible. The joint declaration came at the end of a three-day meeting in Islamabad of foreign ministers from the 57-member Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC). "We emphasise ... accelerating the capacity of the Iraqi security forces and securing the earliest possible withdrawal of foreign forces from Iraq," it said. The declaration also warned that Iraq should not be split along Sunni-Shiite lines. It made no reference to Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's suggestion that a UN-mandated Muslim force should be deployed in Iraq. The OIC declaration called for a settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict and an end to the "foreign occupation" of Muslim countries to promote global peace and security. The ministers denounced the "growing trend of Islamophobia and systematic discrimination against the adherents of Islam," the declaration said. It also "strongly" condemned the global menace of terrorism and vowed to make collective efforts to fight against it.

20 Organizations Ask Pelosi to Leave Iraq It’s Oil

--The law sets no minimum standard for the extent to which foreign companies would not have to invest their earnings in the Iraqi economy, partner with Iraqi companies, hire Iraqi workers or share new technologies.

--International oil companies could be offered some of the most corporate-friendly contracts in the world, including what are called production sharing agreements5. These agreements have been rejected by all the top oil producing countries in the Middle East because they grant long-term contracts (20 to 30 years in the case of Iraq's draft law) and greater control, ownership and profits to the companies than other models. In fact, they are used for only approximately 12 percent of the world's oil.6

Iraqis may very well choose to use the expertise and experience of international oil companies. They are most likely to do so in a manner that best serves their own needs if they are first freed from the tremendous external pressure being exercised by the Bush administration, the oil corporations — and the presence of 150,000 members of the American military. Please drop the Iraqi Oil Law Benchmark, and oppose the Bush administration's ongoing efforts to pressure the Al-Maliki government to pass the law in the near future.

Signed,
20/20 Vision
AfterDowningStreet.org
Avaaz.org
Center for Corporate Policy
CodePink
CounterCorp
Democrats.com
Global Exchange
Global Response
International Forum on Globalization
Iraq Veterans Against the War
MoveOn.Org
Oil Change International
Organic Consumers Organization
Peace Action
PeaceVoter
Polaris Institute
Progressive Democrats of America
Public Citizen
Rainforest Action Network
True Majority
U.S. Labor Against the War
United for Peace and Justice
Voters for Peace

COMMENTARY

Friends Reunited: Back to Bipartisan Business on the Slaughter in Iraq

Whew! Thank God that's over! The mighty wind you hear coming from Washington today is the huge sigh of relief from Democratic leaders, glad that they can now drop all the political posturing about ending the war in Iraq and get back on board with the imperial program. With the crushing defeat yesterday of what was purported to be a bill to "end" the war, Senate Majority Leader Harry "Give 'Em Mild Heck" Reid moved quickly to give the Dear Leader all the money he needs to keep feeding the Babylonian inferno with the dead bodies of Iraqi citizens and American soldiers. In fact, the bill in question, the Feingold Plan, would not have actually ended the illegal occupation of Iraq – God forbid! However, it would have curtailed the extent of the war crime to some degree – withdrawing "combat forces" but keeping troops in Iraq for "counterterrorism" (and aren't we constantly told that all the Iraqi insurgents are "terrorists"?) and "training Iraqi forces" and protecting the fortress embassy being constructed in the heart of Baghdad. But even this slight slackening of the garrotte would not have taken effect until April 2008 – or after 10 more months of savage "surging" by Bush and his sectarian death-squadding allies. (Such as this kind of thing.)

In any case, it was well-known that the bill was dead on arrival and had no chance of passing; that's precisely why the Democratic leaders put it up for consideration. It was a PR exercise to give political cover to those Democrats whose ambitions have forced them to at least nod toward the "consent of the governed," as clearly expressed in the anti-war vote last year. But now that the stunt is over, it's back to bipartisan business. As the New York Times reports:

After the vote, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader and a co-sponsor of the Feingold plan, said he was committed to delivering legislation acceptable to Mr. Bush by the end of next week. He conceded that the compromise was likely to disappoint war opponents who had pushed Congress to set a pull-out date...

In the end, the only proposal to pass the Senate [with overwhelming Democratic support] was a resolution by Senator Thad Cochran of Mississippi, senior Republican on the Appropriations Committee, which urged Congress to provide about $95 billion sought by the president for the war before Memorial Day. Of course, those "war opponents" who will be "disappointed" that the Democrats failed to pass the Feingold "mild curtailment of the slaughter" bill include the majority of citizens in the United States who now oppose the war and want to see it brought to an end, according to all polls. This why they voted the Democrats into power in last year's election – to do something about stopping the war.

Quote of the day: “Our obligation,” he told me this month at his office in the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, “was to give them new institutions and provide security. We have fulfilled that obligation. I don’t think we have an obligation to compensate for the hardships of war.” John Bolton, known to most people as an evil little shit.