News & Views 10/11/07

Photo: Supporters of Shi'ite cleric Grand Ayatollah Mahmoud al-Sarkhi chant slogans as they wave Iraqi flags during a protest in Basra, 550 km (342 miles) south of Baghdad October 11, 2007. About 1,500 followers of Al-Sarkhi protested the recent broadcast by the interior ministry of a videotaped confession from a militant linking the group to major clashes that left more than 200 dead which erupted near the Shi'ite city of Najaf in January. REUTERS/Atef Hassan (IRAQ)

REPORTS – LIFE IN IRAQ

blast walls

“As long as the government and the Americans are building these blast walls, we will have no security”. This is the summery of my conversation with the taxi driver who picked me home. The man said “The Americans don’t want the security situation to be settled because they will have no more reasons to stay in Iraq. And our government shares them this ideology”. I couldn’t discuss the man any more because we Iraqis are very well known that we don’t give up our ideologies simply. So, if I would spend a full day and night to change his mind, I wouldn’t achieve any progress. When I move in some neighborhoods in Baghdad, I see the blast walls increasing day after day and when I write the violence reports, some simple questions came to my mind and I think most of my people ask the same questions. If we have this daily violence in the different neighborhoods of Baghdad, why do the Americans and the Iraqi government insist on building more blast walls? Why do we lose more cement, more sand and more water for useless thing? The government could build thousands of houses and give them to the unemployed young men whom some of them involve in the daily violence because they have nothing in this country. Another question comes to my mind also about the benefit of the blast walls, to protect civilians or to protect the US and Iraqi troops? I have other questions in my mind but I hope first that someone gives me answers for the written ones here.

Ferryman helps span Baghdad's dangerous divides

Ferryman Hisham freely acknowledges that the poor and dangerous conditions of Baghdad's roads that drive residents of the capital to despair are, for him at least, a godsend. With bridges over the Tigris river damaged, blocked to traffic or heavily congested, his boating business is booming. "I have more and more customers," says Hisham as he fires up the engines of his ferry and sets off with yet another load of about 20 passengers across the sluggish, muddy Tigris River that snakes through the capital. For decades, Baghdad's millions of residents had 13 bridges they were able to use to cross the river, but the number of crossing points has decreased since the US-led invasion in 2003. On April 12, a truck bomb destroyed the Al-Sarafiyah Bridge, a main artery connecting the eastern and western halves of the capital, killing eight people. Other overpasses are closed to traffic. One is the Mualaq bridge, which is now enclosed in a US military base, and the July 14 bridge, which falls within the highly fortified Green Zone housing the Iraqi government and foreign embassies. [It is obscene that these two bridges are off limits to the people who built and paid for them. – dancewater]

IRAQ: Rift Valley Fever diagnosed in south, say local authorities

Local authorities in Nassiriyah, a town about 300km south of Baghdad, have asked livestock farmers to take all necessary precautions after laboratory tests showed that some livestock had developed Rift Valley Fever (RVF). “We were informed by local farmers about strange symptoms appearing among sheep and cattle near Nassiriyah,” said Mandhor Rayhan, a spokesman for Dhi Qar provincial council. “A veterinary doctor who examined the animals suggested they should be laboratory tested for Rift Valley Fever and the suspected diagnosis was confirmed in at least four animals.”

My cousin

Qasim was a young guy of 32 years old when he died last June. He was an active guy preferring all kinds of sports with special care to tennis and soccer. He graduated from the college of physical training 9 years ago with A grade, but as he has a brother who was killed by Saddam’s former regime accusing him of being a member of Islamic Dawaa party made him have no chance to be a lecturer in the college nor to go on with his studies to get the master degree having a less chance to find his way of life by renting a small shop of food stuff. He suffered a lot to go on with his new job which is totally different from the job he wanted to be after all those years he spent in studying. The big problem is that in Iraq we don’t have the social insurance that takes care of such a case or another one which I heard yesterday inside a mini bus on my way home for an old man of about 60 years who used to be a porter but as he grew older he started working as a guard for a garage near the Iranian Embassy having a daily payment of about 5 dollars , 2 dollars of them go to transportations. He was talking all the way home and when we passed the central court of Baghdad he said “ You suppose to spread justice and to give an old man like me a pension or a fund to stop working after all those years. Where is the government which supposes to be elected to help Iraqi people? “. I am really upset for such cases that law or government do not give any interest.

9 Children Killed in U.S. Raid in Iraq

An initial airstrike struck a "time-sensitive target," killing four insurgents in the Lake Tharthar area after intelligence reports indicated senior members of al-Qaida in Iraq were meeting there, according to a statement. U.S. ground forces faced small-arms fire after launching a raid against a building after suspects fled the initial meeting location to an area south of the lake, the military said. Subsequent airstrikes were called in. Ground forces secured the area and determined "15 terrorists, six women and nine children were killed," a statement said. Two suspects, one woman and three children also were wounded and one suspected insurgent was detained, it added.

Iraqis file U.S. suit against Blackwater

An injured Iraqi and relatives of three Iraqis killed by security contractors employed by Blackwater USA filed suit Thursday in Washington against the company. The Sept. 16 shootings in Baghdad's Nisoor Square came as Blackwater security personnel were escorting a U.S. State Department convoy. Contractors said they were responding to gunfire but 17 Iraqis were killed and 24 injured. The Washington Post said the suit called the shootings a "massacre" and "senseless slaughter" and asks for an unspecified sum of money. The suit targets Blackwater USA, The Prince Group and Blackwater founder and Chief Executive Officer Erik Prince. The U.S. State Department, the FBI and the Iraqi government reportedly are investigating the incident.

REPORTS – US/UK/OTHERS IN IRAQ

Turkish Tanks Attack Iraq

Turkish tanks and artillery have begun shelling suspected PKK guerrilla positions in towns and villages in Kurdish Northern Iraq. An incursion and possible outright invasion now seems imminent. A Turkish army almost the size of the American occupation forces, some 140,000 Turkish troops are poised on the Iraqi border waiting for Parliamentary approval which is likely to come next week. If the Turks are to invade it will have to be soon, before the mountains separating the countries become impassable with Winter snow. The US and Iraqi governments have vehemently opposed the idea and have no forces left capable of dealing with the turmoil that will ensue in the previously relatively calm north. However, Ankara looks likely to ignore the appeals of the US and Iraq, if there is no viable alternative offered to control the PKK guerrillas.

MIDDLE EAST: Jordan, Syria adopt differing approaches to cholera threat

As cholera awareness posters have been going up in Baghdad, countries bordering Iraq have also taken measures to prevent an outbreak of the disease. The World Health Organization (WHO) has been advising countries in the region to boost their defences against cholera, after reports that cholera had crossed the Iraqi border into Iran where at least 45 people had been infected. The Jordanian Ministry of Health has begun implementing a contingency plan, Ali Assad, head of the National Committee for Epidemics at the ministry, told IRIN. However, the possibility of closing the borders has been ruled out by officials. "We have the anti-cholera treatments to deal with the disease in case it appears. But for now there is no need to close the borders if we follow scientific methods in handling the disease," said Bassam Hijawi, head of the Ministry of Health's Disease Control Department. The Jordanian and Iraqi governments have agreed that air passengers from Iraq be screened and provided with the necessary preventative medication either before they embark on flights to Jordan or when they land in Amman. Passengers are also given certificates by the Iraqi side indicating that they are cholera-free. "No treatment will be given to those holding certificates indicating they have taken preventative medication. The certificates of treatment must be stamped by the government of Iraq and approved by the WHO in order to avoid having people showing fake certificates," said Hijawi. He said Jordan had agreed with Iraq that any passengers suffering from stomach problems would not be allowed to fly to Jordan. The Health Ministry also plans to scrutinise the treatment being given to Iraqis living in Jordan, mainly in densely populated areas. "We want to make sure proper measures are taken when dealing with possible cholera patients," said Assad.

IRAQI REFUGEES

SYRIA-SUDAN: Palestinian refugees turn down Sudanese asylum offer

Most of the over 300 Palestinian-Iraqi refugees stranded for the past 18 months at the makeshift al-Tanf refugee camp on the Syrian side of the Iraq-Syria border have rejected an offer of asylum in Sudan. The Sudanese government made an offer 8 October to take in the 310 Palestinian refugees, who are living in pitiful conditions at the camp. “The [Sudanese] president agreed to the request of both Hamas and Fatah to accommodate them and we are going to inform the Arab League and then make our preparations," said a Sudanese Foreign Ministry official. The proposal, the first official offer of resettlement for refugees at al-Tanf camp received by the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) despite months of talks, was rejected by most of the al-Tanf refugees. One of them, Ahmad Hassan, told IRIN that a camp meeting was held on 8 October to discuss the offer: “Out of 84 families just 30 want to go to Sudan.”

How to Help Iraqi Refugees

ANOTHER Way to help: The Collateral Repair Project

COMMENTARY

Analyst Warns Against Partitioning Iraq

Limiting the power of Iraq's central government and giving more control to ethnically divided regions might lead to large-scale violence and intervention by neighboring countries, an analyst says. If such proposals, sometimes called federalism or "soft partition," were adopted, widespread bloodletting could occur and "local atrocities seem all too likely," according to Anthony H. Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Political instability could ensue and Iraq's economic development could be crippled, said Cordesman, a former director of intelligence assessment at the Pentagon. Iran and others would try to exploit Iraq's weakness and divisions, he wrote in a report released Wednesday. He added that Iraq is divided along sectarian and ethnic lines in many areas by the force of extremists. The Kurds are the only faction that shows major popular support for any formal effort at partition.

Claims of a turning point in Iraq are just wishful thinking

It would be easy to assume from the reaction to Gordon Brown's announcement this week of planned Basra troop reductions that Britain's involvement in Iraq was as good as over. "Iraq: the end" was the Daily Mirror's take, and the response from the Arabic press was pretty similar. "Brown has decided to jump the US ship as it sinks in Iraq", declared the pan-Arab daily al-Quds al-Arabi. That is certainly the impression Brown wanted to create, as he struggles to repair the damage done to the government both at home and abroad by what Ming Campbell, the Liberal Democrat leader, called the "catastrophe" of Iraq. But in reality the British occupation goes on. By next spring, five years after - in the words of General Richard Dannatt, head of the British army - "we kicked the door in" of a sovereign state in defiance of the will of the UN, there will still be 2,500 British troops in Iraq's second city "on overwatch", protecting US convoys and patrolling the Iranian border. And even that level will depend on "conditions on the ground".

Senior military officials have meanwhile let it be known that all British troops could be out of Iraq by the end of 2008. But the odds must be against that. The prime minister has already made it clear he is not prepared to make the popular break with US policy that would be necessary to call time on the British occupation. So long as US forces and their trigger-happy mercenary surrogates continue to roam the streets of Iraq's devastated cities - and there's no sign that occupation is going to be brought to an end any time soon - the pressure on Brown to provide continuing political cover for the White House with at least a token presence will be intense. What does, however, seem to be taking place is a redrawing of the division of labour between the US and Britain in their war on terror. As the British force in Basra is drawn down, its counterpart fighting another lost war in Afghanistan is being expanded. At the same time, George Bush has used last month's upbeat report by General Petraeus to announce a gradual reduction in US forces to their pre-surge level and create the sense of a momentum towards withdrawal that isn't in fact taking place.

US 'has abandoned basic principles of human rights'

Former US president Jimmy Carter last night told CNN the US tortured prisoners in violation of international law, following an assertion last week from George Bush that the US "does not torture". The 2002 winner of the Nobel peace prize accused Mr. Bush of making up his own definition of torture and the hawkish vice president, Dick Cheney, of being a "militant". "Our country for the first time in my life time has abandoned the basic principle of human rights," Mr. Carter told CNN. "We've said that the Geneva conventions do not apply to those people in Abu Ghraib prison and Guantánamo, and we've said we can torture prisoners and deprive them of an accusation of a crime." The New York Times last reported on secret US justice department memorandums supporting the use of "harsh interrogation techniques". Mr Carter said the interrogation methods cited, including "head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures," constitute torture "if you use the international norms of torture as has always been honoured - certainly in the last 60 years since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was promulgated. "But you can make your own definition of human rights and say we don't violate them, and you can make your own definition of torture and say we don't violate them," Carter said.

RESISTANCE

Iraq Insurgent Groups Form One Council

Six main Iraqi insurgent groups announced the formation of a "political council" aimed at "liberating" Iraq from U.S. occupation in a video aired Thursday on Al-Jazeera television. The council appeared to be a new attempt to assert the leadership of the groups, which have moved to distance themselves from another coalition of insurgent factions led by al-Qaida in Iraq. In the video aired on Al-Jazeera, a man identified as the council's spokesman - wearing traditional Iraqi garb, with his face blacked out - announced the council's formation and a "political program to liberate Iraq." He said the program was based on two principles. "First, the occupation is an oppression and aggression, rejected by Islamic Sharia law and tradition. Resistance of occupation is a right guaranteed by all religions and laws," he said. "Second, the armed resistance ... is the legitimate representative of Iraq. It is the one that bears responsibility for the leadership of the people to achieve its legitimate hope."

Quote of the day: Ours is, of course, a callous and dishonest way of thinking about war from the air (undoubtedly because it is the form of barbarism, unlike the car bomb or the beheading, that benefits us). It is time to be more honest. It is time for reporters to take the words "incident", "mistake", "accident", "inadvertent", "errant", and "collateral damage" out of their reportorial vocabularies when it comes to air power. At the level of policy, civilian deaths from the air should be seen as "advertent". They are not mistakes or they wouldn't happen so repeatedly. They are the very givens of this kind of warfare. - Tom Engelhardt