Photo: Residents stand near a mass grave for Tuesday's bombing victims in Baghdad June 3, 2007. Dozens of residents became homeless after a bomb attack in a market in Baghdad's Amil district which killed 19 people and wounding 71 others on May 29. (Ali Jasim/Reuters)
REPORTS – LIFE IN IRAQ
Curfew leaves Bagdhad suburb residents in trouble
Clashes between rival Sunni militant groups in the Sunni neighbourhood of Amiriyah in western Baghdad have left residents facing acute difficulties. In a bid to restore calm after the last week of clashes, the Iraqi authorities and US forces imposed a curfew, adding to residents’ problems. "This is our seventh day indoors and we have run out of basic essentials," said Sarhad Abdul-Ghafour Amin, a 48-year-old taxi driver from Amiriyah. "Shops have been closed for the last week… and we can't venture out to other areas for fear of being shot by militants or US and Iraqi forces," Amin, a father of five, told IRIN. "We have already run out of meat, vegetables, mineral water and fuel for the generator. We have only flour and eggs and are forced to drink dirty water. I have just eight blood pressure tablets left and it will be a real catastrophe for me if I can't get more," he added. On 29 May, fighters from the Islamic Army in Iraq and the 1920 Revolution Brigades clashed with al-Qaeda in Iraq. Iraqi and US troops fanned out in the neighborhood on 31 May and enforced an indefinite curfew. "My nine-year old son has diarrhoea due to drinking dirty water and I can't take him to hospital," said Faiz Mohammed al-Janabi, a 51-year-old government employee from Amiriyah. "Me and my wife can’t go to work and the children are not able to do their final exams,” al-Janabi added.
Reporters Without Borders calls for special unit to protect journalists
Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has called for the creation of a special task force to protect journalists as violence claimed the lives of at least five Iraqi journalists last week. RSF urged the Iraqi authorities on 31 May to establish a special police unit to investigate the killings of journalists and organise awareness programmes among Iraqi security forces and the public. "The Iraqi authorities must fulfil their duty to protect journalists," the group said in a statement on its website. “We call for the creation of a special force within the national police to identify the perpetrators and instigators of the killings of journalists.” RSF also recommended that a witness protection programme be set up with the help of Iraq's neighbours to aid investigations. An official in the Iraqi Cabinet, who spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not authorised to talk to the media, told IRIN that RSF’s proposal had been circulating in government corridors but would be hard to implement because of the deteriorated security situation in the country.
Sick of Their Government
Reports of the poor health among high-ranking Iraqi politicians are being seen as symbolic of the popular mood here about the U.S.-backed government. In late February, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani was flown to neighbouring Jordan for medical treatment amid conflicting reports about his health. Sources in Amman and from Talabani's office in Baghdad told reporters that the 73-year-old had suffered a stroke, but in a televised interview his son said that Talabani was suffering from fatigue or exhaustion. Meanwhile, Shi'ite leader Abdul Azizi al-Hakim, leader of Iraq's largest Shia party, recently arrived in Iran for treatment for lung cancer after being diagnosed at a hospital in the southern U.S. state of Texas. This development, in particular, is expected to create chaos within the Supreme Islamic Council in Iraq, the political organisation the George W. Bush administration has counted on to push through legislation, particularly regarding the new Iraqi oil law. The ailments of their leaders are not just perceived as physical by many Iraqis.
"It is a sick government right from the start and these people's absence shows the huge size of the chaos in Iraq," Waleed Zaidi, a political analyst in Baghdad told IPS. "The truth about rumours does not count as much as the solid fact that all those who are supposed to lead the country to stability are abroad for different reasons. A close look at the Iraqi scene shows that no one is really working to improve the situation." The Iraqi Parliament has not been functioning as it should either. In fact, the chaos in its meeting hall reflects the huge divisions amongst interest groups outside. "To say the truth for history, one must admit that we are not doing much for those who voted for us hoping we would improve their living conditions," a member of the Iraqi Parliament, who requested anonymity, told IPS. "We have our justifications for not being able to serve. Starting from the difficulty in reaching the parliament building to the daily threats to our lives inside and outside the so-called Green Zone." Over the past year, an increasing number of Iraqis have begun to see the Iraqi government as no more than pawns of the United States.
Tension rises over Kirkuk
Rival minorities are at loggerheads over the fate of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. As Kurdish leaders vow to include Kirkuk within their semi-independent enclave, other minorities in the city say they will oppose the move with all available means. President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, and Massoud Barzani, head of the Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq say they would not accept any constitutional amendment to a paragraph calling for a referendum in the city. The paragraph, known as article 140, is among the most contentious in the constitution which Iraqi Sunnis would like to see substantially revised to preserve the country’s national unity. The Kurds want the referendum to take place at the end of the year as stipulated by the constitution because they believe they now have numerical superiority in the city. Other ethnic minorities accuse the Kurds of attempts to change the city’s demographic structure in the years since the downfall of former leader Saddam Hussein. “We are determined to apply article 140 of the Iraqi constitution regarding the normalization of conditions in Kirkuk,” said Talabani. But Iraqi Turkmen and Arabs who live in the city and its suburbs are openly resisting Kurdish attempts to annex Kirkuk.
41 bodies buried in Kirkuk as families fail to retrieve them from morgue
Religious and Social Affairs Committee in Kirkuk has buried 41 bodies of people killed in the escalating sectarian and ethnic strife in the oil-rich city. The bodies were buried when relatives failed to claim them from the city’s hospital morgue. Morgues in Iraq can hardly cope with the inflow of bodies and often they have to bury those not retrieved by families after two months. A medical source said the bodies bore marks of torture and some were greatly deformed. The authorities photograph the bodies and mark the graves in the hope their families would one day have them retrieved.
Iraqi firm supplies government with generators
The State Enterprise for Electrical Industries has boosted its manufacture of small power generators to meet booming demand. Demand for generators has soared due to drastic decline in power output from the national grid. Government offices and public service utilities suffer outages of up to 20 hours a day. The government has turned to small power generators to keep its offices and utilities such as hospitals running. “The company now supplies both the private and public sectors with generators of various sizes and types,” said a statement the company issued recently. The statement said the company has manufactured this year more than 400 generators with various capacities. It said currently many hospitals in Iraq as well as other utilities such as sewage systems rely on the company’s products.
Anger Builds in Falluja Over Security Crackdown
The city that was mostly destroyed by the U.S. military operation Phantom Fury in November 2004 has been under curfew for over two weeks, with no signs of relief. Located 70 kms west of Baghdad, the city made headlines when four Blackwater USA security mercenaries were killed and their bodies horrifically mutilated on Mar. 31, 2004.
That April the city was attacked by the U.S. military, but resistance fighters repelled occupation forces. That set the stage for the November siege which left approximately 70 percent of the city destroyed and turned a quarter of a million residents into refugees.
A recent spike in attacks against Iraqi and U.S. forces in and around the city has prompted harsh measures by the U.S. military, including imposing curfews, limiting movement in and out of Fallujah, and setting up more checkpoints throughout the city -- moves which have greatly angered residents. On May 19, most of these measures, perceived by many people here as a form of collective punishment, began to be more strictly enforced. "Americans and their Iraqi collaborators are blaming us for their failure in controlling the city and the whole country," Ahmed Alwan of the Sunni religious group the Muslim Scholars Association told IPS. "This kind of collective punishment only means slow death to the people of the city and is adding to their agonies that have continued since April 2003."
………."Human life is worth nothing in Fallujah these days," said Jameel Nassir , a 21-year-old university student. "The government soldiers executed so many young men, just like what happened in Haditha, and the new security force conducted massive killings against us while Americans pay both armies millions of dollars to do the dirty work for them." This sentiment is common now in Fallujah. "All army and security forces in Fallujah are monsters," Bilal Ibrahim, a journalist in training in Fallujah, told IPS. "I watched one of their inhuman acts today and realised how brutal they really are. A young man jumped in the river for a swim near the hospital, but he was swept by the current and he was screaming for help. We were ready to save his life, but soldiers started shooting at us and they were laughing at the drowning guy until he died." IPS learned that the young man's name was Mohammed Hikmet and he was a member of a well-known family in the city.
Local tribes in south set up schools
Shia Muslim tribes in Iraq’s southern provinces have begun setting up their own schools in an effort to prevent their children losing another academic year due to insecurity. Using empty mosques, the homes of tribal leaders and open areas, 21 temporary schools in Basra, Missan, Najaf and Kerbala provinces will eventually provide free education to some 2,000 children. Teachers will be paid by the local community. “As violence was increasing and our children were unable to go to schools we decided to make our own,” Khalid Hussein Ala’a, a Shia tribal leader and one of the original initiators of the project, said, noting that most schools in the area were already overburdened with a large number of newly displaced children. “The only problem we had was finding enough books and related materials for the children, but fortunately good people offered us the money we needed to buy these items. Now, hundreds of children have access to education again,” Ala’a said.
REPORTS – IRAQI MILITIAS, POLITICIANS, POWER BROKERS
Moqtada al-Sadr: The man America has in its sights
The US wants to talk to Moqtada al-Sadr. He thinks they want to assassinate him. In this rare interview in Kufa, Iraq, the Shia cleric tells Nizar Latif why. Moqtada al-Sadr, the man Washington blames for its failure to gain control in Iraq, has rejected a call to open direct talks with the US military and has accused the Americans of plotting to assassinate him. The Shia cleric told The Independent on Sunday in an exclusive interview: "The Americans have tried to kill me in the past, but have failed... It is certain that the Americans still want me dead and are still trying to assassinate me. "I am an Iraqi, I am a Muslim, I am free and I reject all forms of occupation. I want to help the Iraqi people. This is everything the Americans hate." Mr Sadr, revered by millions of Iraqi Shias, spoke after leading Friday prayers in the Grand Mosque at Kufa, just over 100 miles south of Baghdad. It is one of the four Iraqi cities considered holy in Shia Islam. He always wears a black turban, the traditional symbol of a Shia cleric who can trace his ancestry to the Prophet Mohamed. But for the second time in two weeks, he also wore a white shroud - a symbol of his willingness to be martyred, and his belief that death is close at hand. The young cleric inherited the aura of his father, Ayatollah Mohammed al-Sadr, who was murdered by Saddam Hussein's regime. He has been a thorn in the side of the Americans since the invasion, with his Mahdi Army - the military wing of Iraq's largest Arab grassroots political movement - having clashed with US and British forces. The movement has been accused of kidnapping five Britons in Baghdad last week, possibly in retaliation for the death of a senior Mahdi commander in Basra at the hands of British forces, but the Sadrists deny involvement.
REPORTS – US/UK/OTHERS IN IRAQ
US, Iraqi troops control a third of Baghdad
U.S.-led soldiers control only about a third of Baghdad, the military said on Monday, almost four months into a security crackdown during which troops are dying at rates not seen for more than two years. More than 18,000 extra U.S. troops have been deployed around Baghdad as part of the campaign, which began in mid-February and is seen as a last-ditch attempt to drag Iraq back from the brink of all-out sectarian civil war. The last of five brigades to be deployed in the crackdown will be in place soon, military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Christopher Garver said, adding that it would not be possible to judge the crackdown's success until all units were in place. "Obviously we're constantly doing an assessment of the plan, but that plan doesn't kick in until everyone's here. We control about a third of the neighbourhoods," he said. But with violence spiking across Iraq as Sunni Islamist al Qaeda and other militant groups try to derail the crackdown, U.S. President George W. Bush and military commanders have warned that a bloody summer lies ahead. "It's going to get harder before it gets easier," Garver said of the counter-insurgency effort. "We know it's going to be a tough fight over the summer."
Commanders say push in Baghdad is short of goal
Three months after the start of the Baghdad security plan that has added thousands of American and Iraqi troops to the capital, they control fewer than one-third of the city's neighborhoods, far short of the initial goal for the operation, according to some commanders and an internal military assessment. The American assessment, completed in late May, found that American and Iraqi forces were able to "protect the population" and "maintain physical influence over" only 146 of the 457 Baghdad neighborhoods. In the remaining 311 neighborhoods, troops have either not begun operations aimed at rooting out insurgents or still face "resistance," according to the one-page assessment, which was provided to The New York Times and summarized reports from brigade and battalion commanders in Baghdad. The assessment offers the first comprehensive look at the progress of the effort to stabilize Baghdad with the heavy influx of additional troops. The last remaining American units in the troop increase are just now arriving. Violence has diminished in many areas, but it is especially chronic in mixed Shiite-Sunni neighborhoods in western Baghdad, several senior officers said. Over all, improvements have not yet been as widespread or lasting across Baghdad, they acknowledged.
Turkish forces shell northern Iraq - Iraqi leader
Iraq said Turkish forces shelled a mountain stronghold of Turkish Kurd rebels in the north of the country on Sunday, a day after it urged Turkey to use diplomacy to resolve rising tensions in the region. While residents say Turkey shells the area almost daily, the latest attack came days after Turkey moved tanks to its border and speculation mounted that Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's government is planning a military incursion. "There were some strikes from Turkish forces on areas next to the Turkish border, but until now there has been no Turkish military invasion of Kurdish lands in Iraq," Masoud Barzani, president of Iraq's Kurdistan region, told a news conference. Iraq's president, Jalal Talabani, also a Kurd, told the same briefing that "we do not accept interference in others' affairs and we do not accept interference in our affairs". The Turkish shelling targeted Haji Umran, a mountainous area which fighters of Turkey's separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) use as a springboard to carry out attacks in Turkey. Residents told Reuters the attack lasted about 30 minutes and caused no casualties. On Saturday, Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said Turkey should not resort to "threats, forces and weapons" as this would only worsen the situation. He made no reference to Turkey's repeated request for U.S. and Iraqi troops to hunt down the rebels.
The security industry: Britain's private army in Iraq
Baghdad is a city where there is no safety and no law, but the five Britons - a computer consultant and his four-man security detail - would have been entitled to feel relatively secure inside the Finance Ministry. The building was heavily guarded by uniformed Iraqi police and paramilitaries. It was a Tuesday morning, and Palestine Street was busy, with more people venturing out since the US-led security "surge" damped down the violence in the centre of the Iraqi capital. Yet in broad daylight, a convoy of vehicles with up to 40 men, some in the camouflage uniforms of special police commandos, was able to drive up to the ministry and pass through the gate. The men headed straight for where the Britons were working, took them without a struggle and drove off. Even by the standards of the most dangerous city in the world, it was an especially brazen kidnapping. Nothing has been heard of the victims since. The search for them has focused on Sadr City, the giant Shia slum on the outskirts of Baghdad that is the stronghold of Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army. Not only did witnesses say that the convoy headed in that direction after leaving the ministry, but the militia is thought to be one of the few groups with the contacts inside the Iraqi government to carry out the operation.
Hoshyar Zebari, the foreign minister, said last week that the Palestine Street area was in the Mahdi Army's "field of operations", adding: "It has been known for some time that the Interior Ministry police, security units and forces are corrupt, are penetrated." According to British officials, the kidnappers would never have got through the gate if the guards had been Sunnis or Kurdish. A senior Mahdi Army figure has denied that the militia was involved. But if the circumstances are mysterious, the abduction has cast light on the way Iraq's bloody chaos has given birth to an entire private security industry, one in which British companies are among the leaders. The irony is that a decreasing proportion of their employees, and clients, are British. If the kidnapping was aimed at Britain, as some believe, to avenge the death of a senior Mahdi Army commander in Basra recently at the hands of British troops, those who carried it out would have had to be especially well informed, because neither the consultant nor his protectors was working for British employers.
The Interrogators
Lagouranis's tools included stress positions, a staged execution and hypothermia so extreme the detainees' lips turned purple. He has written an account of his experiences in a book, "Fear Up Harsh," which has been read by the Pentagon and will be published this week. Stephen Lewis, an interrogator who was deployed with Lagouranis, confirmed the account, and Staff Sgt. Shawn Campbell, who was Lagouranis's team leader and direct supervisor, said Lagouranis's assertions were "as true as true can get. It's all verifiable." John Sifton, a senior researcher for Human Rights Watch, said the group investigated many of Lagouranis's claims about abuses and independently corroborated them. "At every point, there was part of me resisting, part of me enjoying," Lagouranis said. "Using dogs on someone, there was a tingling throughout my body. If you saw the reaction in the prisoner, it's thrilling." In Mosul, he took detainees outside the prison gate to a metal shipping container they called "the disco," with blaring music and lights. Before and after questioning, military police officers stripped them and checked for injuries, noting cuts and bumps "like a car inspection at a parking garage." Once a week, an Iraqi councilman and an American colonel visited. "We had to hide the tortured guys," Lagouranis said.
Then a soldier's aunt sent over several copies of Viktor E. Frankel's Holocaust memoir, "Man's Search for Meaning." Lagouranis found himself trying to pick up tips from the Nazis. He realized he had gone too far. At that point, Lagouranis said, he moderated his techniques and submitted sworn statements to supervisors concerning prisoner abuse. "I couldn't make sense of the moral system" in Iraq, he said. "I couldn't figure out what was right and wrong. There were no rules. They literally said, 'Be creative.' " Lagouranis blames the Bush administration: "They say this is a different kind of war. Different rules for terrorists. Total crap."
How to Help Iraqi Refugees
Quote of the day: "I refuse to be silent any longer. I refuse to be party to an illegal and immoral war against people who did nothing to deserve our aggression. My oath of office is to protect and defend America's laws and its people. By refusing unlawful orders for an illegal war, I fulfill that oath today." - U.S. Army First Lt. Ehren Watada
Photo: Residents stand near a mass grave for Tuesday's bombing victims in 
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