News & Views 08/31/07

Photo: The BBC World Service is monitoring its effects, week by week, by looking at 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 and Baghdad's hospitals. Iraqi civilians continued to bear the brunt of the insurgency during the week of 22-29 August, with 308 killed and 557 wounded. The extent of the killing was highlighted by reports from Baghdad mortuary, which received 35 bodies, all of them killed with sharp tools. All of them had had their eyes removed. [The writing in this graphic is a bit hard to read, but Iraqi civilians are the highest number of Dead and Wounded - by a large margin. - dancewater]

REPORTS – LIFE IN IRAQ

Missing persons in Iraq 1 million – ICRC

The spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has said that the number of missing persons in Iraq rose to one million people, according to Iraqi official reports released recently. "The number of persons missing since the Iraq-Iran war rose from 375,000 to 1,000,000," Hesham Hassan told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI). "The higher number of missing persons represents a harsh fact and a tragedy," the spokesman also said, noting that every mother has the right to wail over her son's grave. "None of the former governments, even the current government, made an accurate estimation of the missing persons in Iraq," Hassan also said. "This is a serious problem facing the ICRC, which has being working in Iraq since 1980," the man noted. "Forensic medicine departments' staff will join scientific courses to raise their knowledge and teach them how to do DNA testing to identify dead bodies," Hesham Hassan said.

Families of Detainees Losing Hope

The 'surge' is the new effort by U.S.-led coalition forces to crack down on terror suspects. The number of detainees held by the U.S. military has increased by more than 50 percent since the U.S. administration announced the surge six months ago, bringing the detainee population to at least 24,500, according to U.S. military officers in Iraq. The officers have said the detainee population was 16,000 in February of this year. The U.S. military unit in charge of the detention centres in Iraq, Task Force 134, reported Aug. 24 that the average length of detention for all detainees is about a year. It reported also that there are about 800 juveniles held in detention facilities. Estimates of the total number of Iraqi detainees vary, but most Iraqis believe the number is more than 50,000. According to Iraqi sources, as well as the U.S. military, the vast majority of detainees are Sunni Arabs from the western areas of Iraq. Most of them are detained without any charge or court warrant. John Sifton, researcher for Human Rights Watch, told reporters Aug. 24 that "the allegations of abuse are far worse for Iraqi facilities than for those detainees in U.S. custody. It is difficult to know the Iraqi detainee population. There are both official and unofficial Iraqi detention systems." Sifton said Human Rights Watch and other human rights organisations "have concerns about a 50 percent increase in detainees because it is 50 percent more people at risk of having been arbitrarily detained or, worse, of being handed over to Iraqi officers who might subject them to torture." Sifton added that there are no reliable numbers provided by the Iraqi government on the number of detainees, and that the U.S. military will not provide the numbers either.

Karbala: The holy city turns into wreckage

The center of Karbala city has turned into a lifeless pile of rubble when formerly it was one of the world's most crowded spots and following clashes that prompted hundreds of thousands of visitors to flee the city and local residents to stay home. Speaking on condition of anonymity, a local resident told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI) that the holy city has turned into a graveyard. "A great silence has fallen over the city. There is no movement in the streets of the old city. Everything has changed after the clashes," he said. According to the latest figures, 48 people were killed and 380 others were injured during clashes that broke out between security forces and gunmen in Karbala, where scores of Shiite Muslim visitors converged from inside and outside Iraq to visit the tombs of imams al-Hussein and al-Abbas as a prelude to celebrating the birth anniversary of Imam al-Mahdi. Commenting on the curfew imposed on the city, Hassan Ali said that the closure of stores and main markets have negatively affected local residents who have been suffering from lack of services since the outbreak of violence.

Reports from Karbala, including videos

Minorities Lose Out in Classroom

Central authorities accused of failing to support non-Arabic language education in northern town. ….Yousif Saeed, in charge of Kurdish studies at the Kirkuk education office, accuses the ministry in Baghdad of neglecting an important constitutional right of non-Arab nations. “The ministry does not provide [Kurdish language] schools and departments with the necessary [education materials], nor with the teaching staff,” he said. The demand for classes in languages other than Arabic in the Kirkuk region is high. In 2007, 305 schools offered classes in Kurdish; 148 in Turkoman; four in Assyrian; while 700 taught only in Arabic. Saeed pointed out that so far all Kurdish schools in Kirkuk are funded by the Kurdistan region’s education ministry. It has allocated 4.5 billion Iraqi dinars for new schools, and pays the salaries of their staff, who number around 6,000. The Turkoman schools suffer from the same shortcomings as the Kurdish schools. Farook Fuad Abdul Rahman, manager of Turkoman studies at the Kirkuk education office, stresses how important studying in their mother language is for Turkoman students, but also complains about a lack of support from central government. He says textbooks and other educational materials used by Turkoman schools are provided by rich Turkoman donors.

Basra Struggles to Cope With Student Demand

As children begin returning to the classroom, the school infrastructure is in dire need of repair. ….The under-resourced and outdated school system in the southern province of Basra is straining to cope with the swelling numbers of children coming back into education there. As demand for education increases, mainly because of the flow of displaced people to the relative safety of southern Iraq, as well as former residents returning from abroad, Basra’s under-funded schools are struggling. The province is famous for its rich oil reserves, but its public services are in poor shape. Conflict over the last two-and-a-half decades, as well as the effects of United Nations sanctions imposed in the Nineties, has ravaged infrastructure and economic capacity throughout Iraq. While Basra produces 1.6 million barrels of oil a day, its citizens see little of the revenue. Residents have to live with piles of garbage in the streets, poorly-equipped hospitals, and schools that often do not even have enough chairs for the children to sit on. ….According to Iraqi trade ministry, an estimated 270,000 people have returned to their homes in the southern provinces since 2003, many of them from exile in Iran. More than 170,000 displaced people have also come to live in the south, according to figures from Basra and Muthanna provincial councils, and the International Organisation of Migration, IOM, from towards the end of 2006.

How Gulf With Sunnis Widened

Shatha al-Musawi, a Shiite member of Parliament, first encountered the Sunni-Shiite divide on the day the Americans captured Saddam Hussein. Hearing the news with a close Sunni friend named Sahira, Musawi erupted like a child. "I jumped, I shouted, I came directly to Sahira and I hugged her," Musawi said. "I was crying, and I said, 'Sahira, this is the moment we waited for.' " At least it should have been: Saddam's henchmen killed Musawi's father when she was only 13; Sahira, too, was a victim, losing her closest uncle to the Saddam government. But instead of celebrating, Sahira stood stiffly. A day later, Musawi said, Sahira's eyes were red from crying. And before long, like so many Sunnis and Shiites here, the two stopped talking. Sectarianism, the issue Musawi said she had wanted to avoid, has instead come to haunt her. She entered politics four years ago, flush with idealism, working closely with Sunnis on Iraq's Constitution and a draft law that would compensate victims of Saddam. Now, even for her, one of Parliament's most independent figures, the urge to reconcile is being blacked out by distrust, disappointment and visceral anger. Her disillusionment helps explain why the Iraqi government has missed most of the political benchmarks laid down by Congress, as the Government Accountability Office concluded in a report to be released in coming days. And her reasons — for defending Shiite militias as a necessary response to Sunni Arab violence, for example — are personal. As with many of Iraq's leaders, her life has been rubbed raw. After seeing Sunni neighbors kill Shiite friends, and after being pushed out of her own home by violence, Musawi has struggled to move beyond the pain and anger.

AUDIO: Dahr Jamail

Dahr Jamail, unembedded independent journalist, discusses the absolute humanitarian catastrophe that the U.S. has created in Iraq, the fact that all the propaganda about the surge is "working," is a bunch of lies, Dahr measures the fate of Nouri al-Malaki's government in the face of the proposed Allawi coup.

Cholera Spreads in Iraq

“My two children, husband and mother have been affected by cholera because we weren't able to get purified water and one of my children is very sick in hospital," said Um Abir, a 34-year-old mother. "We have been displaced since January and we have to camp near a rubbish tip which, according to the doctor, might be the reason for all of the family being affected." The number of Iraqi refugees stands at 4.2 million of whom two million have been displaced within Iraq. Many live in huts made out of rubbish and have no fresh water supplies. In addition to Sulaimamiyah, the cholera has spread to the oil city of Kirkuk. "The bad sanitation in Iraq, especially in the outskirts of cities where IDPs [internally displaced person] are camped, has put people at serious risk," said Dr Abdullah. "In Sulaimaniyah and Kirkuk, at least 42 per cent of the population don't have access to clean water and proper sewage systems." Unicef says that local reports suggest that only 30 per cent of people in Sulaimaniyah have clean drinking water.

Video: Iraq Has No New Oil Law, and No Gas

While US officials on all sides criticize the Iraqi Parliament’s failure to pass an oil law, no one is asking a more critical question to the government’s local credibility and functionality, where is all the gas? Recently many officials in the US have been criticizing the Iraqi Government’s failure to meet certain benchmarks imposed by US officials. One such benchmark has been the passage of a National Oil Law. Although Parliament went into recess without passing such a law, it is not necessarily the most important issue for Iraqis when considering the strength or weakness, and failure or success of their government. These days much of Baghdad and the rest of Iraq is lucky to have even a few hours of electricity per day. Our sources tell us 1 hour per day is the average norm around the country, particularly Baghdad, where the large population center has greatly overstretched its resources and infrastructure are degrading rapidly.

REPORTS – IRAQI MILITIAS, POLITICIANS, POWER BROKERS

More than 300 arrested in Iraq after Karbala melee

Iraqi police responded with an iron fist Friday to the violence that threw the Shiite Muslim holy city of Karbala into chaos earlier this week, arresting more than 300 people in a show of force against Shiite militias. Iraqi officials say Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki ordered the arrests, a possible indication that Maliki, a Shiite who's under intense international pressure to reconcile political rifts between Sunni Muslims and Shiites, intends to crack down on the Mahdi Army. Witnesses in Karbala blame the militia, loosely controlled by radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr, for Tuesday's violence during a religious ceremony. But an official with the Sadrists, the Mahdi Army's political wing, said Friday that the Iraqi police were arresting anyone who was affiliated with the militia, including politicians and government workers who weren't involved in the violence. The official asked that he not be named because he wasn't allowed to speak on behalf of his party.

Sadr May Revoke 'Freeze' On Militia

Radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr told his followers Thursday that he would rescind his order "freezing" the operations of his powerful militia if military raids on his offices did not cease in the next few days, according to officials of Sadr's organization. Sadr's message came the day after he issued a public statement to his Mahdi Army to cease its operations for up to six months so he could restructure the group. But Sadr was forced to reconsider after a raid Thursday by U.S. and Iraqi forces on his office in the southern city of Karbala led to the deaths of six Mahdi Army members and the arrest of 30 others, the officials said. "When you see the enemy is attacking you, you have to defend yourself," said Alaa Abid Jiaara, a Mahdi Army member in Sadr's headquarters in Kufa, about 90 miles south of Baghdad. "Today we have seen the occupation forces and Iraqi forces violate the Sadr followers and their offices and holy symbols. This means it is the duty of the followers of Sadr to defend against them."

Iraq wants other armed groups to follow Sadr lead

Iraq said on Friday that it hopes other armed groups will follow Muslim Shiite cleric Sayyed Moqtada al-Sadr's decision to freeze his 'Mahdi Army'. The suspension of Sadr's 'Mahdi Army' activities was "an opportunity for other groups of different political affiliations" to lay down their arms and help reduce bloodshed in the country, the prime minister's office said. On Wednesday, Sayyed al-Sadr ordered 'the Mahdi Army' to suspend its activities for six months to reorganize it in the wake of reports saying that several individuals claiming they are members of the Mahdi Army are committing acts of violence. The Mahdi army warned that further attacks against it after it suspended its activities for 6 months, it will resume its activities at any time. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's office said Sadr's decision would help in stabilizing Iraq and be an example for other armed groups.

Feuding Iraqi Sunnis and Shi’ites Meet at Peace Seminar in Finland

Representatives of feuding Sunni and Shiite groups in Iraq were meeting at a seminar behind closed doors Friday to discuss ways of ending the bloodshed, conference organizers said. The Crisis Management Initiative, a conflict-prevention group headed by former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, said it was hosting the seminar to examine how lessons learned from peace processes in South Africa and Northern Ireland could be applied to Iraq. Seminar organizers would not say who was attending, except to confirm that both ''Sunni and Shiite groups'' had arrived. The venue and other details will be kept secret until the talks are over, organizers added. Finnish broadcaster YLE said representatives of the radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and the leader of the largest Sunni Arab political group, Adnan al-Dulaimi, were at the gathering. Humam Hammoudi, the Shiite chairman of the Iraqi Parliament's foreign affairs committee, also was in Finland, YLE said.

REPORTS – US/UK/OTHERS IN IRAQ

The Benchmarks Iraq is Missing

The Government Accountability Office has confirmed the obvious: the "benchmarks" the U.S. Congress set out to assess progress in the Iraq war will not be met by a September deadline. Unfortunately, it turns out that Iraq is making major strides in meeting another set of benchmarks: those imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). At the end of 2005, the IMF entered into a stand-by agreement with Iraq. The deal makes IMF funding available to Iraq in exchange for the country adhering to certain IMF policy dictates. More important than the IMF monies, however, adherence to the agreement was a condition for Iraq receiving major reductions in its obligations to repay the enormous debts acquired under Saddam's regime. The IMF has just released Iraq's most recent Letter of Intent, Memorandum of Economic and Financial Policies, and Technical Memorandum of Understanding, dated July 17. The conceit of these documents is that they are "country-owned" and constitute a report on a country's own decision to pursue the policies to which it has committed with the IMF. Everyone understands, however, that the policies are imposed by the IMF, and the reports are the supplicant country's attempt to stay in the good graces of its financial master. Combined, the documents just released report on Iraq's progress in meeting IMF-demanded policies. With one crucial exception -- privatization of the oil sector -- Iraq reports it is making concrete progress in satisfying IMF demands that it turn its economy over to private corporations, cut back on government size and the government's role in the economy, and withdraw labor protections.

……..Apart from some non-trivial accounting issues, the one key area where the Iraqi government is not meeting IMF targets is privatization of the oil sector. (Presumably because this is also a key Congressional benchmark, the government does not acknowledge its growing troubles in this area. Instead, it states, "The GoI [Government of Iraq] will continue its efforts towards developing a competitive and transparent hydrocarbon sector. Draft hydrocarbon legislation will be submitted to the CoR [Council of Representatives] when final agreement between all concerned parties has been reached, possibly in the next few months. The envisaged legislative package includes a draft oil and gas law to regulate the sector, a draft law to reestablish the Iraq National Oil Company, a draft law reorganizing the MoO [Ministry of Oil], and a draft financial management law on the sharing of oil revenues.") This remarkable -- and welcome -- failure reflects massive Iraqi opposition to Big Oil's designs to gain control of Iraq's oil resources, and the success of an international campaign to shine a spotlight on Big Oil's planned oil grab. Every ethnic and geographic grouping in Iraq believes Iraq's oil should be developed under the control of Iraqi state-owned companies rather than multinationals. Overall, Iraqis hold this position by a two-to-one margin, according to a July poll.

US Troops South of Baghdad

On this night, the troops had been ferried by helicopter to a rural enclave abutting the Tigris River. Their mission: Uproot a suspected nest of Sunni insurgents. But the soldiers found only a small cache of weapons outside one of the 13 houses they searched. They detained one man who identified himself with a name that didn't match his government-issued ID, earning him a noisy, expletive-laden interrogation that was easily overheard in the next room. "Keep your head down! Keep your (expletive) head down!" the interrogator yelled in English as an interpreter translated. "Why are you speaking if you're lying? You better think about what you're saying before you talk to me, son. I've got a real short temper tonight!" Another Iraqi man who lived in the house also was questioned, though he wasn't detained. What did he know about Sunni insurgents living in the area, asked Staff Sgt. Kenneth Braxton, who's from Philadelphia. Nothing, the man said. Braxton said he knew the man was lying because of the way he moved his eyes. The sergeant tore an American flag Velcro patch from his sleeve and told the Iraqi to hold it to his chest. Then another soldier used a digital camera to take a picture of the man. "So we've got a picture of you holding an American flag now," Braxton said. He told the man that if he didn't cooperate, the photo would be posted around the neighborhood. It the end, it didn't appear that the soldiers gleaned any helpful information from the man.

…… In late June, the 3rd Brigade turned over control of an abandoned Pepsi factory in Salman Pak — the largest city in the region — to Iraqi police so they could use it as a checkpoint and patrol base. Three hours after U.S. forces left, insurgents swarmed the factory in broad daylight and took control.

Lawmakers Describe “Being Slimed in the Green Zone”

"Spin City," Moran grumbled. "The Iraqis and the Americans were all singing from the same song sheet, and it was deliberately manipulated." But even such tight control could not always filter out the bizarre world inside the barricades. At one point, the three were trying to discuss the state of Iraqi security forces with Iraq's national security adviser, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, but the large, flat-panel television set facing the official proved to be a distraction. Rubaie was watching children's cartoons. When Moran asked him to turn it off, Rubaie protested with a laugh and said, "But this is my favorite television show," Moran recalled. Porter confirmed the incident, although he tried to paint the scene in the best light, noting that at least they had electricity. "I don't disagree it was an odd moment, but I did take a deep breath and say, 'Wait a minute, at least they are using the latest technology, and they are monitoring the world,' " Porter said. "But, yes, it was pretty annoying." It was the bio sheets that seemed to annoy the members of Congress the most. Just who assembled them is not clear.

IRAQI REFUGEES

Food distribution to start for vulnerable Iraqi refugees

In Syria yesterday (Thursday), UNHCR and the World Food Programme started a text SMS campaign by mobile phone to alert more than 33,000 vulnerable Iraqi refugees in Damascus of the launch of the first food distribution programme for them on Saturday. The first food ration will cover two months in anticipation of the needs of many refugee families during the upcoming fasting month of Ramadan. We have found text messages to mobile phones are one the most effective ways of communicating with the refugees who often do not have a stable address but either they or someone close to them in their immediate community has a mobile phone. Due to the constant need to communicate with family and friends remaining in Iraq, mobile phones are often an indispensable tool for many refugee families. The SMS text message was sent only to those eligible for the food distribution. Ten thousand SMS's were sent.

How to Help Iraqi Refugees

ANOTHER Way to help: The Collateral Repair Project

COMMENTARY

Comment: Iraqi Kurdistan's Universities Need Reform

Equality and democracy in higher education must be practiced, not preached. ……Higher education in Iraqi Kurdistan could prove to be a shining example to universities in the rest of the country, if significant changes are made to the way it is administered. The Kurdish government has promised a bright future for its youth, with opportunities to study at excellent new universities, such as the American University of Iraq, to be built in Sulaimaniyah. At the same time, higher education has benefited from the arrival of Arab academics who have fled sectarian violence in central and southern parts of the country, and Kurdish intellectuals who have returned from the Europe and elsewhere. But the university system requires extensive reforms before it can serve Iraqi students. The region's universities are hindered by politics, corruption, a lack of resources and a culture that does not promote critical or independent thought.

Liberals, Bush Unite in Ethnic Cleansing of Iraq

It is now obvious that one impetus behind the "surge" was to accelerate the "ethnic cleansing" of Iraq. Given the manifest failure to establish a strong central government to serve as a client state, the conquerors now find it easier to deal with separate ethnic enclaves, which can police themselves, shake out their own internal conflicts (however bloodily) and thus establish some kind of solid leadership that can cut deals and guarantee investments.

History Will Not Absolve Us

If and when there's the equivalent of an international Nuremberg trial for the American perpetrators of crimes against humanity in Guantánamo, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the CIA's secret prisons, there will be mounds of evidence available from documented international reports by human-rights organizations, including an arm of the European parliament—as well as such deeply footnoted books as Stephen Grey's Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program (St. Martin's Press) and Charlie Savage's just-published Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy (Little, Brown). While the Democratic Congress has yet to begin a serious investigation into what many European legislators already know about American war crimes, a particularly telling report by the International Committee of the Red Cross has been leaked that would surely figure prominently in such a potential Nuremberg trial. The Red Cross itself is bound to public silence concerning the results of its human-rights probes of prisons around the world—or else governments wouldn't let them in. Leaked Red Cross report sets up Bush team for international war-crimes trial.

Now, Where did I put those WMDs?

Oh, here they are! At the United Nations HQ. Eleven years down the line and these little vials are sitting there. Eleven years down the line, a country is destroyed and these little vials are found by chance at the U.N HQ. Eleven years down the line, and since 2003, over 1 million dead, 1 million disappeared and reported missing, and the vials are here. Oh goody good! Eleven years down the line, mass graves, cholera, disease, unemployement, poverty, destruction, a ravaged society, 4.5 million in exile and these little vials are finally found. Hurray! And guess what? They contain a chemical called phosgene and was used by IRAN. I am so happy they finally found the WMD's. But a little bird at the U.N HQ, told me they renamed them WMDF. Weapons of Mass Deception Farts. You can fart along if you wish...

RESISTANCE

My Story

Two months ago, I took a stand that changed my life forever. As a Soldier, a JVB Protective Service Agent, and a Sniper with the Army who had been in Iraq for a year (running over 250 combat missions), I refused to continue to be a part of the occupation. I regret nothing. This is my story.

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: "Most of the greatest evils that man has inflicted upon man have come through people feeling quite certain about something which, in fact, was false." ~ Bertrand Russell