News & Views 12/11/07

Photo: A woman takes her dead son into her arms, as she grieves for her six-year-old son, Dhiya Thamer, who was killed when their family car came under fire by unknown gunmen in Baqouba, capital of Iraq's Diyala province, 60 kilometers (35 miles) northeast of Baghdad, Iraq, in this Sept. 16, 2007, file photo. The boy's ten-year old brother, Qusay, was injured in the attack as the family returned from enrolling the children in school, where Dhiya was to begin his first year. (AP Photo/Adem Hadei/FILE)

REPORTS – LIFE IN IRAQ

Audio Slide Show: Shiite shrines

A reporter from Christian Science Monitor visits two Shi’ite Shrines. Recommended.

Iraq's Yazidis Look to Kurdish Region

The Yazidis live along the sensitive faultline separating Kurds from Arabs - a line whose location will be determined by a vote scheduled for April. Article 140 of the Iraqi constitution states that there will be a referendum in the areas bordering the Kurdish autonomous region, including the northern oil city of Kirkuk, so that people can choose whether to be ruled by the central government or the Kurds. The Yazidis are concentrated in key areas for the referendum, including lands coveted by the Kurds north of Mosul and around Sinjar on the Syrian border. The Kurds see the referendum as a chance to right Saddam Hussein's historic wrongs of forced population transfer and Arabization. The Arabs see it as a Kurdish land grab. Over the centuries the Yazidis, who primarily speak Kurdish, have identified themselves as Arabs or Kurds, depending who held the upper hand. The community now has firmly thrown its lot in with the Kurdish regional government.

Iraq's Civil Resistance

Although it is eclipsed from the headlines by the ongoing carnage, there is an active civil resistance in Iraq that opposes the occupation, the torture regime it protects and the Islamist and Baathist insurgencies alike. This besieged opposition--under threat of repression and assassination--is fighting to keep alive elementary freedoms for women, leading labor struggles against Halliburton and other contractors, opposing the privatization of the country's oil and other resources and seeking a secular future for Iraq. They note that what they call "political Islam" dominates both sides in the conflict--the collaborationist regime and the armed insurgents. Both seek to impose a reactionary, quasi-theocratic order.

….On July 4 the leader of a popular citizens' self-defense force in Baghdad was executed. According to the Iraq Freedom Congress (IFC)--a civil resistance coalition--a unit of US Special Forces troops and Iraqi National Guard forces raided the home of Abdel-Hussein Saddam at 3 am, opening fire without warning on him and his young daughter. The attackers took Abdel-Hussein, leaving the girl bleeding on the floor. Two days later his body was found in a local morgue. Since late last year Abdel-Hussein had been the leader of the Safety Force, a civil patrol organized by the IFC to protect their communities. Like many IFC leaders, he had been an opponent of Saddam Hussein's regime and was imprisoned for two years in the 1990s. His death was mostly ignored by the world media.

…..In addition to ZENKO, IFC solidarity groups have been established in Britain, France and South Korea. In America, US Labor Against the War has brought Iraqi union leaders on speaking tours. But there is still little awareness in the United States of Iraq's civil resistance--even on the antiwar left.

IRAQ: Call for release of female detainees

Iraq’s parliamentary committee for women’s and children’s affairs has demanded the immediate release of female detainees in Iraqi and US-run prisons. “We call upon the Iraqi government and US-led forces to release immediately all female prisoners who have not been convicted,” member of parliament Nadira Habib, deputy head of the parliamentary committee, told IRIN in an interview on 9 December. “The Iraqi government should expedite reviewing the files of these detainees by forming committees of lawyers, judges and prosecutors, as the majority of them [female detainees] are innocents,” Nadira said. According to her, there are 199 female detainees in the Iraqi-run al-Adala prison in Baghdad’s northern Kadhimiyah area, while it is not clear how many women are held in US-run prisons. “No one knows how many female detainees are now in prisons which are run by US forces as they always refuse requests from our committee to visit them,” Nadira said. She said the latest request her committee had made to the US forces was in July when it asked for permission to visit prisons at Baghdad airport and Bucca in Basra. Their request, she said, had been rejected.

National Museum of Iraq's treasures remain hidden from the public

For a few brief hours Tuesday, three dozen fortunate spectators - journalists, local politicians and their guards - gathered at the National Museum of Iraq, their voices echoing through the vast, darkened halls, one of the few times outsiders have been allowed inside since Baghdad fell, looters stripped the galleries of some 15,000 Mesopotamian artifacts, and the museum became a wrenching symbol of the losses of the war. Aside from a brief opening in late 2003, when officials and other guests were invited in, the museum has been shuttered since the invasion. But there has been a great push to reopen the museum of late. Its directors have managed to recover 4,000 missing pieces, among them gems, Islamic coins and carved stones. The pace of recovery picked up as word spread that rewards were offered in exchange for items returned. The museum's director Amira Eidan, recently said that two halls of the museum would reopen this month, but she conceded that the date was not known, since restoration efforts have been slowed by insufficient funding. The cost of recovering the artifacts has consumed the bulk of her museum's budget, and some pieces that have turned up at foreign auctions were too expensive or difficult to retrieve, she said.

Cholera outbreak erupts in Kurdish Iraq - polluted water suspected

The Kurdish region of northern Iraq has withstood the destruction of its villages and deadly gas attacks at the hands of Saddam Hussein. Now, as the semiautonomous Kurdish government strives to increase its independence, the region is coping with another adversary - cholera. One of the areas hardest hit by the recent outbreak is Sulaymaniya, a province of nearly 1 million people in the northeast corner of Iraqi Kurdistan, which straddles the Iranian border. Local health officials said at least 1,217 people have been infected with the cholera bacterium since late August. Azad Faraj, a microbiologist in Sulaymaniya's public health laboratory, said the recent outbreak is derived from a strain common throughout the Mideast. While officials have yet to determine the source, all indications point to contamination of the province's water supply. With a water shortage throughout the province and no sewage treatment plant, doctors say Sulaymaniya is fertile ground for the intestinal disease, which is commonly contracted by drinking water contaminated by human feces.

Christians in Basra told not to celebrate to protest 2 deaths

The Christian archbishop of Basra on Tuesday canceled the celebration of Christmas in that southern city to protest the deaths of a brother and sister, both Christians, as bombings and mayhem struck at cities throughout Iraq. Archbishop Imad al Banna said Christians in Basra should still pray to mark Christmas, but should forgo such celebratory trappings as trees, gift-swapping and family gatherings to protest the deaths of Maysoon Farid, a 30-year-old cashier at a local pharmacy, and her brother Osama, 33. The two were found dead Monday night, dumped in a neighborhood controlled by the Shiite Muslim Mahdi Army militia. ….A friend of Maysoon Farid, Jassim al Mousawi, said Maysoon's brother was kidnapped at about noon on Monday. The kidnapper then used the brother's phone to contact Maysoon and demanded that she meet with him to win her brother's release, Mousawi said. She left to meet the kidnapper. Their bodies were found Monday night, morgue workers and police said, in a poor neighborhood in downtown Basra. There was no claim of responsibility, but Amal Fuad, 52, who said she was a relative and attended their funeral at Mary Afram Catholic Church, said she was certain that the pair's religion was the reason for their deaths. The killings, she said, were intended to make Christians live in fear "until they leave."

Poverty spawns more beggars in Iraqi streets

In the early hours of the morning, the streets and suburbs of the Iraqi capital become crowded with individuals begging at traffic junctions for anything to curb their hunger. Of all ages, beggars have their way of effectively touching people's hearts. By pleading continuously to passers-by or kneeling on sidewalks with their barefooted children, street beggars have become a widespread phenomenon in Iraqi society. Abu Ahmed, a 50-year-old man who owns a jewelry store in Baghdad al-Jadida neighborhood, told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI) that mendicancy "has exceeded all limits. Now we have to deal with a new beggar every 30 minutes." While busy displaying his jewelry sets in the shop window, Abu Ahmed said that jewelry stores are the perfect place for street beggars who usually manage to embarrass couples coming to buy their wedding ring and obtain a few wads of banknotes from them. Abu Zeinab, who hawks clothes on a pavement in a Baghdad street, said that a great majority of street beggars are "disguised thieves." "They stick to people like glue under the pretext of obtaining alms, but we soon find out that they have stolen something. Child beggars are particularly clever at that because women do not mind children getting close to them," Abu Zeinab explained. Commenting on the phenomenon, Salwa Abbas, a civil society activist, attributed the surge in the number of panhandlers to poverty, forced displacement, and rampant unemployment.

Baghdad at night shows Shiite dominance

Coffee houses and restaurants are packed with customers along nearby streets, where turbaned clerics, chador-clad women and families buy furniture, toys and clothes in teeming shops. The district's gold market, the largest in the city, does brisk business until well after dusk. But a drive from Kazimiyah over an unlit Tigris River bridge into Azamiyah, a Sunni stronghold, reveals only darkness and no signs of life along the main road. What nightlife does exist is confined to a walled area of about two square miles heavily patrolled by U.S. troops. One glaring exception: Kasrah, a Shiite enclave, with its lively outdoor market and coffee houses. Night is the time when the Shiite dominance of the capital becomes most apparent following the sectarian "battle of Baghdad," which displaced tens of thousands of Sunnis and reshaped a city where the two sects had lived in relative peace.

Mossad Mission: Murder Iraqi Scholars

More than 500 Iraqi scientists and professors have been murdered by Israel's Mossad intelligence agency, an Iraqi newspaper reports. The report stated that the killings were part of a mission to get rid of those Iraqi nuclear specialists and university professors that refused to cooperate with "Israel". The assassinations were carried out by Mossad and the US Defense Department the Pentagon. So far 350 scientists and 200 professors have been surreptitiously murdered by Israeli Mossad commandoes, deployed to occupied Iraq exclusively to carry out these atrocities. According to the US State Department, these killings came after Washington's attempts to entice Iraqi scientists to cooperate with the US failed. Many specialists living in the US also refused to comply and fled, seeking refuge in other countries. Those willing to cooperate suffered grueling interrogations and even torture by the hands of US officials.

REPORTS – IRAQI MILITIAS, POLITICIANS, POWER BROKERS

Iraq's Sadr uses lull to rebuild Army

For more than three months, the Mahdi Army has been largely silent. The potent, black-clad Iraqi Shiite force put down its guns in late August at the behest of Moqtada al-Sadr. The move has bolstered improved security in Baghdad, even though the US says some Mahdi Army splinter groups that it calls "criminals" or "extremists" have not heeded Mr. Sadr's freeze. Away from public view, however, Sadr's top aides say the anti-American cleric is anything but idle. Instead, he is orchestrating a revival among his army of loyalists entrenched in Baghdad and Shiite enclaves to the south – from the religious centers of Karbala and Najaf to the economic hub of Basra. What is in the making, they say, is a better-trained and leaner force free of rogue elements accused of atrocities and crimes during the height of the sectarian war last year. Many analysts say what may reemerge is an Iraqi version of Lebanon's Hizbullah – a state within a state that embraces politics while maintaining a separate military and social structure that holds powerful sway at home and in the region.

"He is now in the process of reconstituting the [Mahdi] Army and removing all the bad people that committed mistakes and those that sullied its reputation. There will be a whole new structure and dozens of conditions for membership," says Sheikh Abdul-Hadi al-Mahamadawi, a turbaned cleric who commands Sadr's operation in Karbala. Sheikh Mahamadawi says each fighter would have to be vouched for by fellow fighters in good standing and would have to undergo a series of physical and character tests. "He must have high morals, strong faith, and above all, be obedient." Sadr is also said to have created a special force called the "golden one" to cleanse the ranks of the Mahdi Army, or Jaish al-Mahdi in Arabic, from unwanted members, according to militia and police sources.

IRAQ: Iran Eases Support to Radical Group – For Now

Iraq's deputy prime minister has credited Tehran with helping curb the activities of a radical Shia Muslim militia, and he is also hoping Iran will do more to help stabilise its western neighbour. "There is no doubt the Iranians have recently applied influence and leverage over Jaish al-Mahdi to contain and limit its operations inside Iraq," Barham Salih said in an interview to IPS. "This is a welcome sign. But I'll be very frank with you: the very fact that Iran can turn on and off the activities of Jaish al-Mahdi is one of concern to me as an Iraqi official." Washington has long accused Tehran of training, arming and funding Shia extremist groups in Iraq such as the Mehdi Army militia run by cleric Muqtada al Sadr. U.S. defence secretary Robert Gates repeated claims of Iranian interference on Saturday, and called Tehran's foreign policies a threat to the United States and to the Middle East. But his comments followed those of some U.S. officials who said in recent weeks that Iran appears to have halted the flow of arms across its border with its western neighbour, Iraq. Iraq's government spokesman has said the change in Iran's behaviour came when Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki received a pledge from Iranian leaders on his visit to Tehran in August that they would clamp down on cross-border flow of weapons, money and people. Tehran denies interfering in Iraq and has often blamed instability in Iraq on the presence of foreign troops.

HISTORY

Iraq: The Hidden Human Costs

Even in the best of circumstances, Wright notes, artillery fire is imprecise, which leads him to wonder why reporters and antiwar groups concerned about collateral damage in war pay so little attention to it:

The beauty of aircraft, coupled with their high-tech destructive power, captures the imagination. From a news standpoint, jets flying through the sky make for much more dramatic footage than images of cannons parked in the mud, intermittently belching puffs of smoke.

But the fact is, the Marines rely much more on artillery bombardment than on aircraft dropping precision-guided munitions. During our thirty-six hours outside Nasiriyah they have already lobbed an estimated 2,000 rounds into the city. The impact of this shelling on its 400,000 residents must be devastating.

Entering the city with the Marines, Wright gets to see just how devastating the impact has been. Smoke curls from collapsed structures, and houses facing the road are pockmarked and cratered. The corpses of Iraqi attackers are scattered on the road leading out of the city. Run over repeatedly by tracked vehicles, "they are flattened, with their entrails squished out," Wright notes, adding:

We pass a bus, smashed and burned, with charred human remains sitting upright in some windows. There's a man in the road with no head and a dead little girl, too, about three or four, lying on her back. She's wearing a dress and has no legs.

Heading north, the Marines find themselves amid the palm trees and canals of the Fertile Crescent, but all around are signs of death. Along the highway are torched vehicles with "charred corpses nearby, occupants who crawled out and made it a few meters before expiring, with their grasping hands still smoldering." Lying beside one car is the mangled body of a small child, face down, whose clothes are too ripped to determine the gender. "Seeing this is almost no longer a big deal," Wright comments. "Since the shooting started in Nasiriyah forty-eight hours ago, firing weapons and seeing dead people has become almost routine."

Quote of the day: "Lying is done with words and also with silence." - Adrienne Rich