News & Views 10/18/07

Photo: The young brother of Rahna Rasheed, who lies dead and covered on the stretcher, cries as relatives Raja, left, Hamid, third right, and Shokriya Hasan react outside Baqouba's hospital capital of Iraq's Diyala province, 60 kilometers (35 miles) northeast of Baghdad, on Thursday, Oct. 18, 2007. Rasheed died during an Iraqi army raid north of Baqouba. (AP Photo)

More information from Gorilla’s Guides: This is Rahna Rasheed’s younger brother. That’s her body you can see covered on the stretcher in the background. She was 17. She was shot this morning by green zone government forces who mistook her for a fighter during a raid on her village north of Baqubah. She was rushed to Baqubah hospital but died of gunshot wounds to the head. The lady with bloodstained clothers and blood on her face is her mother. The other two adults are Hamid and Shokriya Hasan her uncle and aunt. The photograph was taken this morning at Baqubah hospital morgue. [Other captions say the man is the dead girl’s father. – dancewater]

REPORTS – LIFE IN IRAQ

Surrounding minutes

It was about 9 am when I reached one of the most crowded areas near one of the main bus stations in Baghdad. Our mini bus was stuck in the crazy traffic jam. During our 10 minutes waiting to pass the intersection, I saw a US army convoy, four Humvee vehicles and two 4wheel drive cars among them. OMG, Not again. Everybody was watching the convoy carefully praying so hard that they pass over peacefully. While we were watching, one of the passengers turned back and suddenly he said “death in front, death behind”. Everybody said “what is wrong with you?” and he said “look what is coming from behind”. I turned back and I saw another US army convoy of four big green tanks, I think it’s the type that is called the striker tanks. It was the longest ten minutes I ever lived. 24 eyes of the 12 men in the minibus were watching every single movement very carefully. The first convoy which was coming from the other side passed and the first reaction came from the old man who was sitting beside me who said “Al Hamdu Li Allah = Thanks God.”

But a young guy answered him quickly “wait until the second convoy passes. The other convoy of the tanks went through the wrong side and the traffic police did his best to open the way to them. When they passed, the young man said “now we can say Al Hamdu Li Allah”. For myself, I was thinking about the incident of Al Nosoor square and the scene of the shooting and the bullets that tore the bodies of the innocent people came to my mind. I imagined the shouts of the woman whose son was killed in the same car with her. I saw the wreck of the car few days after the incident. I also remembered the tears of the old man that we met who lost his wife in the incident. I don’t how long we will live with these daily fears.

Kurds protest Turkish vote on Iraq raids

Thousands of Kurds in the northern Iraqi city of Erbil marched today to call for peaceful dialogue with Turkey and to protest its Parliament's approval a day earlier of a measure authorizing troops to cross into northern Iraq to confront Kurdish rebels. The marchers insisted on resistance to any military incursion from Turkey, Reuters reported. At the same time, the Iraqi foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, said Iraq wanted the Kurdish rebels to leave northern Iraq as soon as possible, according to Reuters. The Wednesday vote sent an angry message to the Baghdad government and its Washington sponsor. But Turkey, a member of NATO, made it clear that it would not immediately carry out the resolution, and today Zebari said he did not expect military action anytime soon, according to Reuters. A senior Turkish government official, Egemen Bagis, said that Turkey hoped for "full cooperation" from both Iraq and the United States in its efforts against Turkish rebels. Security experts here and in the United States agreed that Turkey was unlikely to cross the United States with a full-scale military operation. Still, the government is closer than it has been in years to military action of some sort, embarrassed into acting by a public angry over mounting deaths and what is seen as American inaction. More than two dozen Turks, some of them civilians, have been killed in cross-border rebel attacks in the past several weeks, and the powerful Turkish military which, unlike the government, has long been pressing for action, is fanning public anger.

Iraqi POW bodies 'eye-gauged, mutilated'

THE British military is facing allegations that the bodies of Iraqi prisoners showed evidence of eye-gauging, genital mutilation and hanging. Hospital workers allegedly reported the signs of torture and murder on the bodies Iraqi insurgents left dead after a gun battle with British troops and Iraqi insurgents three year ago, according to reports from UK newspaper The Guardian. It was also reported int The Guardian that a prisoner taken by troops had made a statement which claimed he was “continuously punched and kicked” and saw blood coming from nearby toilets. The British Ministry of Defence has denied any wrongdoing, although pressure is mounting for an independent inquiry into the allegations. According to death certificates seen by the newspaper the day after the May 2004 battle, seven reportedly showed signs of “mutilation” and “torture”. The Royal Military Police conducted their own year-long inquiry into the deaths and the handling of the bodies, but found “no evidence of deliberate mutilation of corpses by the British Army”, the ministry told the newspaper.

Iraq's Brutally Wounded (Photo Essay)

Many thousands in Iraq have suffered horrific injuries, yet have virtually no way of receiving care.

Private security guards shoot three Iraqi civilians

Guards from a British security firm fired on a taxi in Iraq on Thursday wounding three civilians, police said, in a shooting that will put new pressure on the government to rein in private contractors. A woman journalist was among the casualties when the guards opened fire after the taxi approached their convoy near the northern oil city of Kirkuk, police said. "I saw a convoy of three cars pass a taxi and one of the guards took his weapon and opened fire on the taxi," said police officer Hussain Rashid. "I tried myself to stop the convoy but they didn't pay attention to me. They stopped about 300 metres (yards) from the scene, then they moved," he added. The US Army Corps of Engineers confirmed that an incident involving one of its security teams, belonging to British company Erinys, had occurred at 10:45 am (0745 GMT) but it only mentioned one injury.

Security worsens in Diwaniya

Armed groups are fighting U.S. and Iraqi troops in the Province of Qadisiyya of which the city of Diwaniya is the capital. The fighting has marred a short period of stability in the province where warring factional Shiite armed groups vie for control. A new group, calling itself Kataib al-Hussein, or Hussein battalions, had driven Iraqi police from a major district in the province, but reports issued following the attack allege the group has been driven out. The new group is said to be heavily armed and trained. U.S. troops in the province had called in helicopter gun ships and war planes to help out in their push. There have been no official reports of casualties but residents say civilians were killed and injured in the fighting.

FEATURE-Baghdad's concrete walls divide but protect

Walls are an emotive issue in Baghdad. Towering concrete barriers have mushroomed across Iraq's capital, put up by U.S. forces striving to cripple Sunni and Shi'ite militants. Critics argue the walls divide communities, stifle economic activity, imprison residents and only widen the sectarian rifts that remain at the root of Iraq's political gridlock. Proponents say walls protect single sect or mixed neighbourhoods alike, allow the security forces to choke off insurgent groups, make people feel safer and permit residents to start policing their own streets. For Um Ali, a shopkeeper in the mainly Sunni Arab district of Qadissiya, the high concrete blast walls make it difficult to move around and new checkpoints add hours to journeys. But at the same time the measures have provided extra security. As a Shi'ite in a Sunni area she had pondered fleeing regular sectarian attacks but plans to stay for now. "Of course it's better. You know how I used to feel?" she said. "I feel safer now." She said gunmen pulled up in cars and targeted Shi'ite-owned stores on the main shopping street. She only opened her shop for a few hours a day and then enlisted a partner to look after it. But the U.S. walls and checkpoints have stopped the gunmen. Now Um Ali opens her stationery store whenever she wants. [Take this with a large grain of salt. – dancewater]

REPORTS – IRAQI MILITIAS, POLITICIANS, POWER BROKERS

Pressure pays off

Pressure from PSI (Public Services International) has forced a rethink on trade union rights in Iraq. Abdullah Muhsin of the General Federation of Iraqi Workers told PSI that the deputy prime minister has met the union to discuss the possibility of repealing laws that currently ban public service unions. “This was due to international pressure from unions, including PSI,” he said. Apparently, the emergency motion adopted by congress has had some impact. The Government has also indicated that it may release union funds, which it has seized. Hangaw Abdullah Khan of the Kurdish Federation of Workers stated, “We need international support for a new labour law in all Iraq.” The Federation of Workers’ Councils of Iraq also supports the emergency resolution which calls for the union ban to be lifted. The Federation has called for a co-ordination committee to oppose privatisation and support women’s rights. PSI says the blanket ban on unions for public sector workers flouts UN conventions and undermines efforts to build democracy.

REPORTS – US/UK/OTHERS IN IRAQ

Texas Oil Firm Warned On Kurdish Deal

The State Department contradicted a Texas oil company yesterday, saying it had warned the firm about the "political and legal risks" of an oil-exploration contract that it has signed with the Kurdish government in northern Iraq. Department officials noted, however, that there was nothing they could have done to prevent the Dallas-based Hunt Oil Corp. from securing the contract because it does not violate U.S. law. "Hunt Oil has been advised of U.S. policy urging companies not to sign oil contracts with the Kurdistan Regional Government until [an Iraqi] national oil law is passed, as well as the potential political and legal risks inherent in such a contract," said department spokesman Tom Casey. The Iraqi parliament has failed to pass a national oil law despite calls from the Bush administration dating back nearly two years. In the meantime, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has signed eight contracts and soon expects to complete two more, in addition to the deal with Hunt Oil - the only American company to conclude a contract. "The company decided to sign a contract regardless of our advice, but that is their decision. They are not a U.S. government entity, and they"re allowed to make those calls," Casey said. "When they heard our opinion, they clearly made their own choice on this matter, but it"s certainly not one we support." Hunt Oil spokeswoman Jeanne Phillips issued a prepared statement on Monday saying the company had not sought or received U.S. government advice on the deal it signed last month. "Our policy as a company is to act independently when determining where to explore for oil and gas around the world," she said. But Casey said there was "at least one contact" between Hunt Oil representatives and U.S. officials in Iraq "before they made their decision."

Report: U.S.-led coalition has little influence in southern Iraq

A new U.S. government report suggests that American officials may have little hope of influencing developments in Iraq's southern provinces amid growing concerns about Iranian involvement there. The report, released Thursday by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, said that poor security prevents U.S. and coalition civilian officials from meeting with many of their Iraqi counterparts, yet Iranians can travel unmolested in the region. The report suggests that conditions are improving in some parts of the country, notably Anbar province, which until earlier this year was the center of the Sunni insurgency. But its description of the limits experienced by coalition reconstruction teams in southern Iraq suggests difficulties for the United States in a strategic region of the country

IRAQ: Turkish offensive would lead to humanitarian crisis, ICRC warns

A humanitarian crisis will accompany any large-scale Turkish military operations aimed at pursuing Turkish-Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) warned on 17 October. "Any military conflict in the region will bring about a humanitarian crisis as civilians will be killed or displaced due to shelling and troop incursions," said northern Iraq ICRC spokesperson Flamerz Mohammed. "So far the Turkish artillery shells… over the past few days only concentrated on abandoned mountains and did not reach border villages, but we are observing and assessing the situation on the borders," Mohammed said. "All our warehouses in the region are filled with food, medicines and aid materials for emergencies and if the situation deteriorates then we will rely on our warehouses in neighbouring countries," he said. On 17 October the Turkish parliament overwhelmingly approved a possible cross-border offensive against Kurdish rebels of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) allegedly operating in northern Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region. Hours before the vote, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki called his Turkish counterpart to say that his government was determined to halt the "terrorist activities" of the PKK on Iraqi territory, his office said. Kurdish rebels from the PKK, which has Marxist-Leninist roots, have been fighting since 1984 for the autonomy of Turkey's Kurdish-dominated southeast. According to the Turkish government, the conflict, which reached a peak in the mid-1990s, has claimed tens of thousands of lives; thousands of villages have been affected and hundreds of thousands of Kurds have fled to cities in other parts of Turkey.

Report: Iraqis Years Away From Autonomy

Editor's Note: When reading this story, keep this in mind: As of this past summer, when the State Department stopped releasing the data, Iraqis still had fewer hours of electricity, on average, than they enjoyed before the invasion in 2003. After the power grid was destroyed during the first Gulf War, Iraqi engineers got the system up and running within 90 days. Also keep in mind that hundreds of thousands of career civil servants were fired unceremoniously from a number of Iraqi ministries on the orders of Paul Bremer, who headed the transitional occupation government.

Teaching local officials in Iraq to govern themselves and provide their citizens with basic services will take "years of steady engagement." It also will rely heavily on the U.S. government's ability to recruit skilled civilians, investigators told a House panel Thursday. "Stability operations is not a game for pick up teams," said Robert Perito, a security expert at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington. The United States has dispatched various provincial reconstruction teams (PRTs) in Iraq and Afghanistan to teach, coach and mentor Iraqis in towns and provinces. Staffed mostly by civilian officials, with the military providing security, the teams show promise but with an effectiveness that is difficult to judge because the needs vary greatly from province to province. The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction concluded in a new report Thursday that the teams are making "incremental progress" but require "years of steady engagement."

Iraqi Contracts With Iran and China Concern U.S.

Iraq has agreed to award $1.1 billion in contracts to Iranian and Chinese companies to build a pair of enormous power plants, the Iraqi electricity minister said Tuesday. Word of the project prompted serious concerns among American military officials, who fear that Iranian commercial investments can mask military activities at a time of heightened tension with Iran. The Iraqi electricity minister, Karim Wahid, said that the Iranian project would be built in Sadr City, a Shiite enclave in Baghdad that is controlled by followers of the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr. He added that Iran had also agreed to provide cheap electricity from its own grid to southern Iraq, and to build a large power plant essentially free of charge in an area between the two southern Shiite holy cities of Karbala and Najaf.

IRAQI REFUGEES

Photos of Iraqi Refugees in Amman

Syria's border closure hits Iraqi refugees

Suffering kidney disease and living in a Damascus slum, Amal Jabar lost her only means of support when Syria closed its borders to Iraqi refugees a few weeks ago. "My son Mostafa used to come and bring me whatever little he scraped together from odd jobs in Baghdad. I would be starving now if it wasn't for charity," said Jabar, who fled from the al-Amel district in Baghdad, a focus of sectarian fighting. "The area is swamped with militias and Mostafa's life is in danger. He was planning to move to Syria, but now he cannot and I haven't heard from him," she said. Syria's decision on October 1 to shut its borders to Iraqi nationals, except merchants and academics, has disrupted lives of refugees, separated families and trapped thousands amid killings and upheaval, according to refugees and aid agencies. With an estimated 1.4-2 million refugees constituting up to 10 percent of Syria's population, the government said it could no longer absorb more Iraqis, although thousands were crossing the border every day.

Fire destroys UNHCR tents in Damascus depot

A fire raced through UNHCR warehouses near Damascus on Thursday, destroying tents worth about US$1 million and setting back the refugee agency's operations in the Syrian capital. UNHCR staff evacuated hundreds of Iraqi refugees from a registration centre adjacent to the three warehouses in Douma, located some 15 kilometres from Damascus, but there were no reports of injuries aside from some cases of smoke inhalation and shock. "This is a serious setback for UNHCR's operations in Damascus," said Laurens Jolles, UNHCR's representative in Syria. "We have worked hard to get the centre up and running to register and assist large groups of Iraqis. We will work around the clock to re-establish the services." Firefighters brought the blaze under control about six hours after it started and police were trying to determine the cause. UNHCR staff on site said one warehouse had been completely destroyed and a second one badly damaged. But all the stock in the second warehouse was saved. A UNHCR supply officer said almost 6,000 canvas tents, 1,400 lightweight tents and one rubhall were destroyed in the blaze. He estimated their value at just over US$1 million. Jolles said UNHCR planned to replace the destroyed stocks.

How to Help Iraqi Refugees

ANOTHER Way to help: The Collateral Repair Project

COMMENTARY

VIDEO: Op-Ed – Know Thine Enemy

A short video on the Iraqi resistance.

VIDEO: Rebuttal to Paul Bremer’s Claim About Disbanding Iraqi Army

Charles Ferguson, a filmmaker, presents a rebuttal to claims made by L. Paul Bremer III that top American officials approved the decision to disband the Iraqi army.

I Did Not Look Away

No, I did not look away
from the things I went there to see.
In a land where hunger had become rare
until sanctions and war joined hands in prayer,

I saw women in black begging at street corners
and boys too poor for school
hawking cigarettes and kerosene
to keep their families afloat.

I saw parents rushing into hospitals
with children in their arms,
and emergency rooms flooded with patients
holding in pain on bleeding floors.

I saw ambulances on cinder blocks
rotting away in a parking lot
because ambulances are weapons of war
and can't be repaired in Iraq.

I saw oxygen tanks standing in line,
waiting for valves that never come,
and hospital hallways stripped to the bone.
Everything gone, lugged off and sold
for even the simplest supplies --
a light bulb, a pail, a bag of diapers.

I saw an infant named Amani Kasim
curled up on a filthy blanket,
her face confined to an oxygen mask,
her body shriveled and discolored
from severe malnutrition.

I saw a fourteen-year old girl named Amira
who could not stand and could not speak
and was dying from cancer.
"Two maybe three days more," the doctor said.
"We do not have the proper drugs
so we give supportive care only."

She was so thin, so weak
she could not lift her head off the pillow.
I caressed her brow and cheek
and the damp ringlets of hair
fallen about her face.
A collapsed blood bag froze above her.
Mother and grandmother softly wept
and prayed to God for mercy.

I saw other mothers tending incubators,
that didn't have thermostats
and might overheat.
I saw the blood and urine
on beds without sheets,
the nimbus of flies around bottles of formula,
the sadness in the doctors' eyes
as they told me which infants
would live or die.

No, I didn't look away.
I caressed each brow,
whispered through my touch,
"Your life is a part of me and when you go,
I shall weep."

I saw a generation of mothers
keeping watch on their children.
I heard them ask me for medicine
and felt their hands open then meet
the emptiness of mine. - George Capaccio

Putin calls war in Iraq ‘pointless’

President Vladimir Putin, in his latest jab at Washington, suggested Thursday that the U.S. military campaign in Iraq was a ”pointless” battle against the Iraqi people, aimed in part at seizing the country’s oil reserves. Putin has increasingly confronted U.S. foreign policy in recent months, deepening the chill between Washington and Moscow. Among other things, he has questioned U.S. plans for a missile defense system in Europe and the U.S. push for sanctions against Iran for its nuclear programs.

Quote of the day: To sin is a human business, to justify sins is a devilish business. ~ Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy, Russian author, 1828-1910