News & Views 07/06/07

Photo: A man cover the face of Iraqi intelligence officer Hecor Mohammed, after he died in the hospital after he was attacked by gunmen in central Kirkuk, Iraq, 290 kilometers (180 miles) north of Baghdad, Friday, July 6, 2007. (AP Photo/Emad Matti) [It is by looking at photos such as this that I have come to realize the terrible conditions that Iraqi hospitals are functioning under – lack of supplies, no bedding, lack of equipment, lots of filthy floors and walls. They are barely functioning. Meanwhile, Iraqi doctors are forced to leave the country in order to survive. – dancewater]

REPORTS – LIFE IN IRAQ

Killing 10,000 Iraqis Every Month

The results are nevertheless staggering for those of us who read the American press: for the deaths that the victims families knew for sure who the perpetrator was, U.S. forces (or their "Coalition of the Willing" allies) were responsible for 56%. That is, we can be very confident that the Coalition had killed at least 180,000 Iraqis by the middle of 2006. Moreover, we have every reason to believe that the U.S. is responsible for its pro rata share (or more) of the unattributed deaths. That means that the U.S. and its allies may well have killed upwards of 330,000 Iraqis by the middle of 2006. The remainder can be attributed to the insurgents, criminals, and to Iraqi forces. And let's be very clear here: car bombs, the one source that was most easy for victims' families to identify, was responsible for 13% of the deaths, about 80,000 people, or about 2000 per month. This is horrendous, but it is far less than half of the confirmed American total, and less than a quarter of the probable American total.

Even if we work with the lower, confirmed, figured of 180,000 Iraqi deaths caused by the occupation firepower, which yields an average of just over 5,000 Iraqis killed every month by U.S. forces and our allies since the beginning of the war. And we have to remember that the rate of fatalities was twice as high in 2006 as the overall average, meaning that the American average in 2006 was well over 10,000 per month, or something over 300 Iraqis every day, including Sundays. With the surge that began in 2007, the current figure is likely even higher.

……This sounds pretty tame, and not capable of generating the statistics that the Lancet study documented. But the sheer quantity of American patrols"1000 each day"and the sheer quantity of the confrontations inside people's homes, the responses to sniper and IED attacks, and the ensuring firefights add up to mass slaughter.

Imams issue fatwas banning fishing in the Tigris

Fishing in the River Tigris is under threat after Imams [religious leaders], Shia as well as Sunni, issued fatwas [religious rulings] banning fishing in the river. The fatwas were issued after government officials from the Ministry of the Environment said at end of May that the Tigris was contaminated and not fit either for drinking or personal use. As a result, hundreds of fishermen are desperate as fishing in the river is their only source of income. “For years we have been fishing for carp, using the money to feed our families, but now we are banned from fishing because the government has said the water is polluted, and militants are targeting anyone who tries to break the law,” said Abu Khalid, 49, a fisherman in Baghdad. “People don’t buy our fish any more. They have been frightened off by the latest information about water contamination, but we are desperate to try and find a way to support our families,” Khalid added.

Iraq violence: Monitoring the surge

An extra 30,000 US troops have been deployed in Iraq, mainly in and around the capital Baghdad, since the launch of the security drive or "surge" in February. The BBC World Service is monitoring its effects, week by week, by looking at military casualty figures, the pressure on hospitals and quality of life for ordinary civilians. The graphics and analysis are based on figures from the US and Iraqi authorities, Baghdad's hospitals and three families from different neighbourhoods in the capital.

The build-up of US troops in Iraq is now complete. The level of violence has not decreased, with attacks shifting away from places where US forces are concentrated, such as Baghdad and Anbar, into other, less defended provinces, says the BBC's Defence and Security correspondent Rob Watson. During the seven-day period ending on 4 July, there were 617 violent deaths compared to 299 for the week before. As in the previous two weeks, most of those killed were civilians - 365 of them. There was also a big increase in the reported deaths of insurgents, up from 98 dead last week to 175. These figures are from the Iraqi Interior Ministry, whose figures are consistently lower than anyone else's estimates of casualties.

One of the hospitals covered by the survey provides some grim details about the death toll. Al-Yarmouk received 10 limbs with the rest of the bodies missing, 22 victims who had been beheaded, 45 people killed by one car bomb alone in the al-Baaya district and the bodies of 13 people who had been shot in the head.

Liquidation of Iraqi scientists is part of organized crime and not sectarian strife

Official statistics show that more than 500 Iraqi scientists have been assassinated since the U.S. invaders landed in Baghdad in 2003. A list of 200 top scientists who were killed since the invasion was leaked to Azzaman and the newspaper hopes of getting hold of the rest of the names sometime in the future. The 200 names, their titles as well as the positions they held in government science and technology institutions were published in the newspaper’s issue of July 5. Government officials, speaking on condition their names not be revealed, said, “The murderous campaign is part of dangerous plan of liquidation.” One senior official said he believed the campaign “is part of an organized crime linked to regional and domestic agendas.” The official stopped short of elaborating, but said the identities of the hundreds of assassinated scientists shows that they come from a wide-spectrum of Iraqi society. “Among the murdered scientists are Sunnis, Shiites, Muslims, Christians, Arabs and Kurds. It cannot be the result of the current sectarian war,” he said. The statistics also reveal that about 17,000 Iraqi scientists, engineers, doctors and other professionals have left the country since the invasion.

Curfews imposed in 2 Iraqi towns as violence surges

Officials imposed curfews in two towns to the far east and south of Baghdad on Thursday, amid violence between rival Sunni Muslims in one incident and clashes between a Shiite Muslim militia and Iraqi security forces in another. Security officials said local authorities shut down foot and vehicular traffic in Mendli, near the Iranian border, after local Sunni gunmen fought in the streets for more than two hours against what some said were members of the insurgent group al Qaida in Iraq. Casualty figures weren't available, but witnesses reported fierce gunfights and "huge financial losses" in the town. Authorities clamped a curfew on Simawa, 170 miles south of Baghdad, after Iraqi police and army units confronted Mahdi Army militiamen, loyal to anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr. Witnesses described intense volleys of gunfire that killed four people, including a police officer, and injured nine.

10-foot-deep trench will protect Iraqi city of Karbala

A now-dead plan to ring Baghdad with a trench to keep out insurgents has found new life in Karbala, a predominately Shiite Muslim city 50 miles south of the capital. Iraqi construction crews this month will begin digging a 12-mile-long trench to the west and south of the city of 1.4 million residents to help prevent car bombs and protect two holy Shiite shrines. U.S. and Iraqi officials shelved plans announced last year for a bigger trench to surround Baghdad. Instead, they've focused on conducting military operations in the provinces and raiding car-bomb shops. The Karbala trench will create a 10-foot-deep crescent, buttressing approaches from the Sunni Muslim stronghold of Ramadi, about 70 miles northwest of Karbala, to the main highway running south to Najaf. Police towers will punctuate the trench, which will funnel traffic to checkpoints outside the city center. Local officials think that the trench will offer another layer of protection from insurgents, even though it won't surround the city. "Farms on the other sides of the city will prevent terrorists" from entering, said Abdul Aal al Yasiry, the president of the Karbala Governorate Council. He added that the trench will allow the city to concentrate guards in towers and checkpoints, rather than patrolling miles of open desert. Residents welcome any plan to make Karbala safer. "If the trench will prevent car bombs, let them make a thousand trenches," said Haider Abdul Razzaq, 39, who runs a hotel for pilgrims. "But I'm afraid the trench wouldn't stop the terrorists from their plans to kill civilians if they couldn't reach the shrines."

Man Executed for Role in 2003 Iraq Blast

An alleged al-Qaida militant was executed for his role in one of the first and bloodiest bombings in Iraq, a 2003 blast that killed Shiite leader Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim and 84 other people, a Justice Ministry official said Friday. Oras Mohammed Abdul-Aziz was executed by hanging Tuesday in Baghdad after being sentenced to death in October, Ministry Undersecretary Busho Ibrahim told The Associated Press. The execution announcement was the first word that a suspect had been tried in the al-Hakim killing. Al-Qaida in Iraq claimed responsibility for the attack a huge car bomb in August 2003 that went off outside the Shrine of Ali in Najaf, one of Shiite Islam's holist sites, and killed al-Hakim. Al-Hakim was the leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and was poised to become a major figure in Iraqi politics following the fall of Saddam Hussein only months before his assassination. His brother Abdulaziz al-Hakim now heads the group, the largest Shiite party in parliament.

REPORTS – IRAQI MILITIAS, POLITICIANS, POWER BROKERS

Sadr bloc joins Sunnis in rejecting Iraq oil law

Followers of Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr on Thursday joined a growing chorus of Sunni Arab, Kurdish and Shiite opposition to a draft oil law backed by Washington. His opposition, apparently motivated by anger at the idea of US and British oil firms snapping up contracts after their countries invaded Iraq, promises to feed a fierce debate but will not necessarily derail the legislation. "You cannot have both the Kurds and the Sadrists on the outside," said Joost Hiltermann, Iraq analyst at the International Crisis Group. Nevertheless, "the oil law is one of the benchmarks that has a chance of success. It may not require the agreement of the Sadrists if there is agreement between the Supreme Council, the Dawa Party, and the Kurds."

Founder of Iraq Oil Workers Union Rejects U.S.-Backed Oil Law as "Robbery"

Hashmeya Muhsin Hussein is the president of the Electrical Utility Workers Union, she is the first woman to head a national union in Iraq. Faleh Abood Umara is the general secretary of the Federation of Oil Unions and a founding member of the oil workers union in Iraq. In 1998, he was detained by the Saddam Hussein regime for his activities on behalf of his coworkers. They recently joined us in our firehouse studio. I began by asking Faleh Abood Umara to describe the current situation for oil workers in Iraq and why he is protesting the proposed oil law.

….. FALEH ABOOD UMARA: [translated] With regards to the situation of the Iraqi oil workers, they’re persevering in their work and preserving the Iraqi oil wells. The reason we went on strike was to make twenty-seven demands, which we submitted to the Iraqi prime minister. He agreed to them, but the minister of oil did not implement the demands that led to the strike. The most important point or one of the most important points is our demand not to rush through the new Iraqi oil law, because we believe that this oil law does not serve the interests of the Iraqi people. So we ask our friends in the United States, as well, to stand in solidarity with us and publicize the ill effects of this law, so that it never is agreed upon in the parliament.

VIDEO: The Sadr Movement in Syria and Iraq

The US has again been stepping up actions against Muqtada Al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army. American soldiers, apparently searching for Iranian or Iran-supported militants, killed 26 Saturday in Sadr City. Iraq’s Prime Minister, Nuri Al-Maliki has spoken out, condemning the kilings. Currently it seems that all the violence in Iraq not committed by Sunni insurgents is committed by Muqtada’s Mahdi Army. The label “Shiite militias” has become a catch-all that is too often equated without question to Muqtada’s followers. His followers are dedicated to him for two main reasons, the first is an alliance they feel to him as heir to his incredibly popular father, Muhammad Sadeq Al-Sadr, who is believed to have been assassinated on Saddam Hussein’s order in 1999. The second reason is that Muqtada utilized the resources of the Sadr Movement’s, as it was called under his father, to create stability and provide services to poor Iraqis when Baghdad’s infrastructure collapsed in 2003. Today, although the Mahdi Army has been involved in controversial actions, kidnappings, killings, and other acts, the Sadr Movement claims it is purging its membership, and taking responsibility for its past.

Factional militias steal exam papers by force

This year’s baccalaureate exams have been marred by the theft of exam papers and the entry of armed groups into exam halls. Exam papers were made available prior to the start of the examination and passed to students who are members of certain factions with militias. The exams are among the most important in Iraq because their results are crucial for the students’ choice of the university they want to read at and the college or department to enroll in. Some militiamen are reported to have barged into exam halls and forced teachers to dictate the answers to certain students.

REPORTS – US/UK/OTHERS IN IRAQ

PHOTOS: US Troops Build Walls at Night

US Constructing Barrier to Divide Dora Between Sunnis and Shi'ites.

COMMENTARY

Insurgents 'right to take on US'

Insurgents in Iraq are right to try to force US troops out of the country, a former British army commander has said. Gen Sir Michael Rose also told the BBC's Newsnight programme that the US and the UK must "admit defeat" and stop fighting "a hopeless war" in Iraq. Iraqi insurgents would not give in, he said. "I don't excuse them for some of the terrible things they do, but I do understand why they are resisting."

Denial of the link with Iraq is delusional and dangerous

Two years on from the suicide bombings that devastated London's streets and tube system, official Britain is still in the deepest denial about why this country is a target for al-Qaida- style terror attacks. In the wake of the abortive atrocities in London and Glasgow, there has been no shortage of lurid media coverage of the "doctors' plot" that came so close to carnage, nor of bombastic calls for the nation to stand firm against terrorists. The Sun was yesterday handing out free union jacks to "fly in the face of terror", while its heavyweight counterparts have been demanding ever greater efforts by an increasingly intimidated Muslim community to demonstrate its loyalty. Mercifully, the tone adopted by Gordon Brown has been less strident than his predecessor's - he has avoided the rhetoric of the war on terror and the shopping lists of new coercive powers favoured by Tony Blair in the aftermath of the July 2005 attacks and last year's alleged transatlantic airline plot.

But when it comes to the substance, there has been little change. The failed bombings were, Brown insisted, an attack on "our British way of life" and the "values that we represent", "unrelated" to the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan or any other conflict. He compared the fight against the bombers' ideology with the struggle against communism and called for a similar "propaganda effort" to win "hearts and minds". In the days since, this "it's nothing to do with the war" refrain has since been taken up with gusto by large parts of the media. The pro-war Times and Telegraph have led the field, with neoconservative commentators and politicians hammering home the Blair-Bush message that terror is simply the product of an evil ideology. Anyone who dissents or suggests a connection with Britain's violent role in the Muslim world is portrayed as somehow soft on terrorism - as the Liberal Democrats' Nick Clegg found when he tentatively referred to Muslim grievances in the House of Commons earlier this week.

…… Of course, it's perfectly true that al-Qaida and its "takfiri" fellow travellers have an extreme, violently sectarian and socially conservative ideology. But it is simply delusional - and flies in the face of logic and history - to fail to recognise the central link between the terror threat and Britain's post-9/11 actions in the Muslim world.

Poet & Novelist Sinan Antoon on the U.S. Destruction of the Iraqi State

I mean, it’s devastating, even for someone who -- I mean, I’m not a nationalist, but I think any human being with a conscience should be, you know -- would be really saddened by what’s happening, because here is a country that had seen so much violence and had gone through wars that were supported by the so-called civilized world. And not that there’s any, you know, any linearity in history where you expect any justice from history, but it’s just too much, I think, for one people to go through in the last three decades. But I just want to point out that the tragedies that the Iraqis are going through right now, of course, were compounded by the latest invasion. But they started a long time ago, and it’s important for American citizens to understand the responsibility of this country goes way back to supporting the Baathist takeover of power in Iraq and also supporting the Saddam regime while it was building its reign of terror and destroying Iraqi lives during the Iran-Iraq War. So 2003 and the invasion is a culmination for a long policy that’s been going on for three decades.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you respond to those who say, “Are you going to say Iraq was better under Saddam Hussein?”

SINAN ANTOON: You know, I had hoped that I would never say that, but if you want to go to the question of either/or, which now we are used to, of course life was better under Saddam Hussein than now. That does not mean that I or those who say that are pro-dictatorship.

But the reality is, for average citizens and human beings, most of us would want to live under, you know -- when we have electricity, we have the basic services, we have water, there is police, there is order on the street. Most people, if they have this choice of living under dictatorship, while having electricity and water and knowing what the red lines are -- under Saddam, people knew what to do to stay alive. You don’t organize politically, of course. You don’t say anything against the regime. You can have a relatively safe life, that is, if you have no political ambitions and don’t say anything. But now, it’s a complete collapse and chaos. You could be just walking down the street and be killed. So, of course, life was better under Saddam Hussein. Also, that does not mean that Saddam was better, but under Saddam Hussein there was something called the Iraqi state. I want to emphasize that what the US did is not only overthrow Saddam -- that’s a byproduct -- it destroyed the Iraqi state, which is something that took eighty-five years to build, all of its institutions and everything. That was not all the product of Saddam. Saddam was a latecomer. What the United States did is destroy an entire state, entire infrastructure, all of the institutions, so that there, you know -- so, of course, life was better when you had a system that was functioning.

IRAQI REFUGEES

Syria and Jordan still wait for help despite pledges made at Iraq meeting

The UN refugee agency made a fresh call Friday on donors to help countries hosting hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees and said Syria and Jordan were still waiting for help despite expressions of support made during a major international conference on Iraq in April. "It is unconscionable that generous host countries be left on their own to deal with such a huge crisis. We strongly urge governments to step forward now to support them in dealing with this situation and renew our call for international solidarity and burden sharing," UNHCR spokesman Ron Redmond told reporters in Geneva on Friday. Main host countries Syria and Jordan, with an estimated 2 million Iraqi refugees between them, are struggling to cope. Syria continues to receive about 2,000 Iraqis a day, and about 30,000 a month end up staying. "The growing refugee population and the communities that host them are facing enormous hardships that will only get worse if the international community doesn't put its money where its mouth is," Redmond said.

Sweden tightens rules on Iraqi asylum seekers

Sweden, which hosts more Iraqi refugees than any other country in Europe, has ruled that Iraqis seeking asylum must show they would be personally at risk in their homeland to avoid being sent back. The ruling came after Sweden's migration board issued a statement on Friday, giving its decision on three separate cases. In the first case, a Christian man from Baghdad was granted asylum on the basis that he could show he was at personal risk while in his home city, the statement said. "The second man from Baghdad could not point to any individual circumstances that would increase the risk that he is a victim of the violence in Baghdad to a greater extent than others living there," the statement said. "He therefore does not fulfil the criteria." A third asylum-seeker from southern Iraq was also denied asylum on the same basis. The ruling clarifies the criteria for asylum-seekers in Sweden. Previously, the migration board considered applications on a case-by-case basis, a migration board official said.

How to Help Iraqi Refugees

RESISTANCE

Iraq Moratorium Day – September 21 and every third Friday thereafter ~ "I hereby make a commitment that on Friday, September 21, 2007, and the third Friday of every subsequent month I will break my daily routine and take some action, by myself or with others, to end the War in Iraq."

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