Photo: Basra: Iraqis mourn over the coffin of a Mahdi Army militant during his funeral in Iraq's southern port city of Basra, 26 May 2007. Shiite militiamen of the Mahdi Army pounded a British base in Iraq's main southern city of Basra overnight in retaliation for the slaying of their commander, Wissam Abu Qader, the British military said. British forces then attacked one militia position with a fighter jet and Iraqi police Captain Hassan Ali said the raid killed three people and wounded seven. (Essam al-Sudani/AFP-Getty Images)
REPORTS – LIFE IN IRAQ
How Does It Really Work?
Tuesday morning was a disaster for me , my family , relatives and friends.
At nine o'clock of Tuesday 22nd of May , the American forces had a raid on Amel neighborhood ( west Baghdad) ,the place where I live with my family which is few miles from Baghdad airport. At that time of the miserable day, I was at work as well as my three brothers so we left father and mother with two wives of my brothers with their children at home . Three armoured vehicles came to our alley ( street)carrying dozens of soldiers to search the houses looking for terrorists leaving at least 50 other vehicles in the area to do the same thing with other blocks . Father ( Abdul Kadhim Khalifa Murad Al-Taee ,65 years and a father of four sons and three daughters) was the first to receive the unwanted guests. There were at least twenty soldiers who entered the house and forced my father to sit on his knees with his head towards the wall with no consideration to his age ( 65 years old) and sickness( he has blood pressure with his left eye on recovery from a new operation ). They refused giving any kind of mercy or time to let the interpreter explain what my mother want to say to them about my father's condition . There were nine members at home during the raid (Father, mother, my two brothers' wives, four children (their ages; 14, 13, 9 , 7 and 2). After that , they kept the whole family in one room ( living room) except my father and one of the eldest nephew. My nephew( 14 years old) was sleeping at that time and he was shocked to be awaken up by American soldiers who were carrying guns and forced to join the group . Two of my nephews are pupils ( 7 and 9 years )and they were supposed to have their final examinations ( the primary schools started one day before the secondary ones)at 10 am ,but the Americans refused to let them go for their school. During the raid , the soldiers found some cables which are used for electric connections and they suspected that those cables might be used for bombing while no body in the world who has brain can doubt of having such kind of cables inside the Iraqi houses for one simple reason as we are in need for power supplies from different sources forgetting the main source which is not available nowadays . As you know we have two generators at home with one cable for them ( to swab them every 5 hours to have rest and fill with gasoline), one cable to the street's generator which supply the block with power ( about 30 houses paying 12 thousand dinars for every single ampere ) and we have 8 amperes from that generator . The last cable was to be connected with the neighbor's house to have power supply from them in case they have it , but as they have been displaced ,we kept it aside having no idea that the Americans would suspect of the cable which will be used in bombing cars to get rid of it before discovering it. Meanwhile , they searched my mother's wardrobe finding a small tube having salt inside with some kinds of solid perfumes suspecting that these things are chemical materials which would be used in bombing giving no chance for my mother to explain to them or her trying to tell them that she can taste it to ensure them what materials they are and the reasons behind keeping these things in her wardrobe ( she has got these things as a gift from her relative as she went to the Imam Al-Ridha Shrine in Iran to have his blessing ) . Few seconds later , they brought my father taking his finger prints telling him that him that the test is positive and the marks on his hands referring that he is an expert of explosives .In fact , he has nothing to do with that , he was an electrician who worked hard for about forty years till he had got the pension in 1991, but he didn't stop working for his own business till the last four years ago. I forgot to tell that they asked my father about any kind of weapons that we have , he told them that we have only one machine gun in the house and he gave it to them . They took the gun and my father saying that his hands carry TNT . Father has been taken to the unknown having no idea where he is , the condition he is in as he is ill and where to ask to have any kind of information about him or the charges behind this arrest.
Today is Friday and we still have no news of my father nor the Americans. [You can leave comments at this blog. – dancewater]
Music
Iraq is well known in the region with its Maqam music that goes back in history for hundreds of years. Nowadays the freedom that have been given to radicals and criminals to kill and kidnap almost made every single musician and Iraqi singer to flee the country. Music disappeared from our lives, no concerts, no dancing parties and if the current situation continued there will be no CD's to buy. i loved the song that you will hear part of it and i want to share it with you.... I want to share with you this small part of a recent song of the famous Iraqi singer Kathem Al Sahir in Arabic (كاظم الساهر) or written as Kazim. the translation of the part (88 seconds):
“City of love, i tread your streets
And see love carried within shrouds
Pour torture, however you please, upon my body
For there are no witnesses to torture by my jailer.”
To listen CLICK HERE (to save right click and then save target as)
Antiquities Department asks political faction to evacuate Basra Museum
A political faction has occupied the premises of Basra Museum which used to house thousands of archaeological relics. The Basra Museum was looted shortly after U.S.-led invasion of the country in 2003. The British troops who occupied Basra did nothing to protect the museum. The museum’s collection of magnificent and priceless artifacts was stolen or broken and homeless families moved into its premises. A statement by The Antiquities Department faxed to the newspaper says the museum and its annexes are now occupied by an influential political faction in Basra which paid off the families to persuade them to move. The statement did not name the political party but said its leaders were demanding huge sums of money before leaving. Most of the museum’s possessions are still missing and the building itself is in need of repairs and renovation.
Pipeline to carry Iraqi crude to Iran
Iraq has accepted an Iranian offer to build a pipeline connecting its terminals and refineries to the prolific Iraqi oil fields in Basra. Assem Jihad, Oil Ministry’s Information Officer said, the agreement was reached during a meeting between Oil Minister Hussain Shahristani and the Iranian ambassador in Baghdad. Initially, the pipeline will carry 200,000 barrels of Iraqi crude to Iran. The countries will soon form a joint committee on how to implement the project, Jihad said. However, Jihad declined comment on financing and duration of execution. But said Shahristani has invited Iranian firms to invest in Iraq and present their offers to build new refineries in the country.
Iraqi church leaders blame U.S. for their parishioners’ plight
Iraqi church leaders say the country’s Christians are suffering immensely and have blamed the U.S. for what they describe as their “tragic conditions”. They said their churches were being evacuated and monasteries occupied by U.S. occupation troops while cities like Basra and Baghdad were being emptied of Christians. “U.S. and Iraqi officials are responsible … They have insulted and humiliated our temples and churches,” said Patriarch Amanuel Dali, the head of the Chaldean Catholic community in Iraq. The Chaldeans were the largest Christian group in the country but their numbers have dwindled since the U.S. invasion of 2003. “Christians are being forced to flee their areas by armed groups who are in control of streets in Baghdad, Basra, Mosul and other cities,” Dali said. “I plead with the world countries and human rights organizations to stop the violations being committed against Iraqi minorities,” he added. Iraqi Christians in the southern and central parts of Iraq are afraid to attend church services and monks and nuns living in Baghdad’s numerous monasteries have all but fled.
More unidentified bodies buried in Karbala cemetery
Grave diggers in the holy city of Karbala have buried 91 bodies of victims of violence and sectarian strife in the country. An official source said the bodies were so mutilated that it was difficult for the authorities to recognize their identity. The bodies were left for a long period in the Baghdad morgue. The decision to have them buried was taken because the morgue had no more room left to accommodate victims of the latest upsurge in violence. Iraqi families are in constant move, fleeing from one area to another either escaping sectarian fighting or U.S. military operations. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are on the move and nearly two million are said to have fled abroad. Municipal workers’ main task in major cities is collecting dead bodies left on pavements of streets and roundabouts. They are taken to the morgue but normally there is no one requesting the bodies for proper burial. The source said the bodies buried in Karbala were pictured and numbered in a bid to enable the loved ones recognize them “if they are interested in retrieving the bodies in the future.”
REPORTS – IRAQI MILITIAS, POLITICIANS, POWER BROKERS
TNT Found in the Office of Iraqi MP
Partisan politics make for a dirty game, but nowhere more so than in Iraq. Lt. Gen. Aboud Qanbar, the Iraqi in charge of the Baghdad security plan and the Interior Ministry, reportedly presented Prime Minister Maliki with a dossier of 15 parliamentarians who should be stripped of immunity and prosecuted for ties to terrorists last month. Now the NY Sun's Eli Lake reports that one of the names on that list, Khalaf al-Ayan, is suspected of involvement in the April 12 Parliament bombing.
Mahdi Army Vows Revenge on British Troops After Basra Leader is Killed
The Mahdi army Shia militia vowed last night to conduct revenge attacks on British soldiers in southern Iraq after its Basra leader was killed by Iraqi special forces in an operation supported by UK troops. Wissam Abu Qader, described by British officials as responsible for criminal activities and attacks against foreign troops, was killed shortly after leaving Friday prayers. A British army spokesman said he died while trying to resist arrest. An Iraqi military intelligence officer said he was travelling in a car with two other men when it came under fire.
…..But the Mahdi army blamed an Iraqi army hit squad, which it says works with the British, for the killing, and promised swift revenge. "The Mahdi army will attack any British unit, they will see to avenge his killing," said a mid-ranking commander, Abu Mujtaba. "Our men are moving all over Basra now in civilian cars carrying RPGs and weapons. We have the full cooperation of the police who will inform us on any moving British vehicles." The incident came just hours after the militia's leader in Iraq, the cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, resurfaced after keeping a low profile for four months, portraying himself as a nationalist leader committed to the political process. He called on his militia to stop attacks on Iraqi security forces.
Former security personnel reluctant to report to Interior Ministry
Many members of the former security forces are reluctant to join the Interior Ministry for fear of retaliation. The ministry, in a bid to accommodate former security forces, has given those residing in Iraq 60 days to report to its offices if they were willing to join the new security organs. Those living outside Iraq have 90 days to report. The measure, according to Lt. Gen. Abdulkarim Khalifa, is part of government plans to reverse a U.S.-sponsored decree which disbanded the former army, security organizations and other institutions which served under the regime of Saddam Hussein. Many in Iraq and abroad believe the decree was one of the main catalysts to fuel violence and the growing insurgency against U.S. occupation troops. But the move is drawing harsh criticism from several political factions and former security personnel themselves. Some political factions, particularly those dominated by Iraqi Shiites, see the move as an attempt to resurrect former security organs and members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath party. They are keen to keep the so-called policy of debaathification under which Baath party members are not allowed to take up government positions or join the armed forces. On the other hand, many former Baath party members fear that once they register with the Interior Ministry their identity will be exposed and as a result become easy targets for ‘death squads’ bent on liquidating former army, police and security officers.
COMMENTARY
Report Highlights US-Centric Nature of American Coverage of War
The war in Iraq has dwarfed all other topics in the American news media in the early months of 2007—taking up more than three times the space devoted to the next most popular subject. But only a portion of this has focused on the state of things in Iraq itself, and even less about the plight of Iraqis and the internal affairs of their country, according to a new study of the American news media. The majority of the war coverage, 55%, has been about the political debate back in Washington. Less than a third, 31%, has been focused on events in Iraq itself. And about half that coverage has been about American soldiers there. In all, just one in six stories about the war has been focused on Iraqis, Iraqi casualties or the internal political affairs of their country, the report finds, while more than eight in ten have focused primarily Americans or American policy. [It’s all about US. – dancewater]
UNICEF Appeal For Iraqi Children
Iraqi children are getting caught up in a growing humanitarian tragedy as violence continues in the country, the UN Children's Fund (Unicef) has warned. Half of the four million Iraqis who have fled their homes since the conflict began are children. And the needs of children are outstripping the international aid that has been supplied, the agency said. More funds were needed, Unicef said, launching an appeal for almost $42m (£21m) over the next six months. "Violence is creating widows and orphans on a daily basis, many of whom are left to struggle for survival," it said. "Iraq's children, already casualties of a quarter of a century of conflict and deprivation, are being caught up in a rapidly worsening humanitarian tragedy."
….."Our experience operating daily inside Iraq confirms to us that aid does indeed reach children and makes a tremendous impact, even in extremely insecure areas," said Daniel Toole, Unicef's chief of emergency operations. One such example was a recent immunisation programme under which 3.6 million children were vaccinated against measles, mumps and rubella, Unicef said. But it warned that cholera could be a problem over the summer, citing five early cases among children under 12 in the city of Najaf. A lack of clean drinking water and healthcare could increase the danger of an outbreak, the agency said. It plans to supply hundreds of thousands of rehydration packs which can stop the disease becoming fatal.
The Secret Iraq Documents My 8-Year-Old Found
Presumably, staffers at the CPA's Information Management Unit, which produced the weekly reports, were cutting and pasting large sections of text into the reports and then eliminating all but the few short passages they needed. Much of the material they were cribbing seems to have come from the kind of sensitive, security-related documents that were never meant to be available to the public. In fact, about half of the 20 improperly redacted documents I downloaded, including the March 28 report, contain deleted portions that all seem to come from one single, 1,000-word security memo. The editors kept pulling text from a document titled "Why Are the Attacks Down in Al-Anbar Province -- Several Theories." (The security memo and the last page of the March 28 report can be seen here, along with several other CPA documents that can be downloaded.)
Microsoft Word's "Mark up" feature shows the time and date of the deletion and the identity of the person doing the deleting, but it doesn't give the original author of the passage or when it was written. The title and hints in the text point to a memo written by one person in December 2003 or January 2004, when daily attacks on coalition forces in Anbar, the heavily Sunni province west of Baghdad that is the heartland of the insurgency, were the lowest in many months. These were the CPA's salad days. Prior to the al-Sadr uprising and the Abu Ghraib scandal and the failed siege of Fallujah later in 2004, the CPA believed that it was succeeding in reshaping Iraq. In his book "The Assassins' Gate," George Packer depicts late 2003 and early 2004 as the last phase of quiet isolation for the CPA, before the facts on the ground began to impinge on its Green Zone idyll. "Why Are the Attacks Down" shows the CPA on the cusp, as the author gives a half-dozen different theories for the short-term decline in violence.
………A final argument for the downturn in attacks offers what briefly looks like a flash of reality. The "Operational Pause" theory surmises that reduced attacks may be a statistical blip. They may increase again as "terrorists" regroup for future fights against the Americans and "other Iraqis." But then the author calls this "a boring theory," and notes, "There are very few persons we have met who subscribe to this." Nowhere in any of these theories, including the "boring" one, does the author address the dissolution of the Iraqi Army as a major contributor to the violence. Nowhere, in fact, does the author seem to know which "bums" or "losers" are attacking the Americans or why. Indeed, the most remarkable passage in the entire deletion is a simple statement by an Iraqi businessman, whom the writer quotes in passing while explaining why American-induced economic prosperity will end the fighting. "It is nothing personal," the Iraqi says. "I like you and believe you could be bringing us a better future, but I still sympathize with those who attack the coalition because it is not right for Iraq to be occupied by foreign military forces." In the world of the CPA circa 2004, first one American glosses over this Iraqi's prophetic words, and then another tries -- unsuccessfully, as it turns out -- to delete them.
How to Help Iraqi Refugees
Quote of the day: This administration has acted from a position that denigrates human rights, legal rights, moral rights, the rights of decency, inalienable rights, privacy rights, civil rights, women’s rights, environmental rights, worker’s rights, and children’s rights. The only right they have respected is the right of entitlement. Their own. Our only hope is to demand our rights, our rights as citizens, our rights to our ideals, our rights to a sense of morality. The destruction of a small village in Vietnam was once explained away by our military as a village that had to be destroyed in order to save it. That perversity became symbolic of the entire war. Accurately. The War on Iraq should now be described as a war that must be lost in order to save America. That is our moral obligation. – Robert Shetterly
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