Photo: Residents grieve near the body of a relative, killed in Tuesday's bomb attack, outside a hospital morgue in Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) northeast of Baghdad December 19, 2007. A suicide bomber killed 16 people when he detonated a vest rigged with explosives in a Shi'ite Muslim village north of Baghdad on Tuesday, police said. REUTERS/Stringer (IRAQ)
REPORTS – LIFE IN IRAQ
FEATURE-Wounded Iraqis cope with lifelong scars
For generations to come, Iraqis will have to cope with the physical and mental scars of tens of thousands of people severely injured in the violence of the violence of the past four years. They include thousands of amputees, many of them children. The date, time and place that changed Ali Abdullah's life is etched in his memory. It was Nov. 24, 2005. A Thursday morning. He was 13. Ali's father runs a parking lot south of Baghdad. On that day, he had agreed to let his only son open the business by himself for the first time. It was a proud moment. Ali went to work. In the middle of the morning he stepped out for breakfast just as a car bomb exploded nearby. Shrapnel destroyed one of his legs and an eye, and peppered his chest with wounds. Ali told his story while waiting for a new artificial leg to be fitted at the Baghdad Artificial Limbs Centre, one of the Iraqi capital's two main prosthetics clinics.
Video: Saving Iraqi children - CNN's Arwa Damon reports on the state of Iraq's children and their desperate need for help.
Another organization that helps Iraqi children is No More Victims.
All Iraqi Groups Blame U.S. Invasion for Discord, Study Shows
Iraqis of all sectarian and ethnic groups believe that the U.S. military invasion is the primary root of the violent differences among them, and see the departure of "occupying forces" as the key to national reconciliation, according to focus groups conducted for the U.S. military last month. That is good news, according to a military analysis of the results. At the very least, analysts optimistically concluded, the findings indicate that Iraqis hold some "shared beliefs" that may eventually allow them to surmount the divisions that have led to a civil war.
Sunnis Mark Eid in Iraq With Optimism
Sunni Muslims marked the beginning of the Eid al-Adha holiday Wednesday, with thousands of worshippers gathering in mosques around Baghdad in an atmosphere of optimism after months of declining violence. More than 10,000 faithful showed at the Abu Hanifa mosque in the Sunni-dominated neighborhood of Azamiyah at sunrise to perform the first prayers for the four-day holiday. Locals said they felt safer during the Eid this year, but security was still increased at mosques and other holy sites around the Iraqi capital, with extra bomb-detecting equipment added. Extra security also was ordered for amusement parks and other places likely to draw crowds. "This Eid differs from the previous ones, as we have received unexpected numbers of worshippers," Jamal al-Kubaisi, imam of Abu Hanifa, the biggest Sunni mosque in the Iraqi capital, told The Associated Press.
IRAQ: Looking to Security from Paper Police
"To survive in Iraq under U.S. occupation, there are only two jobs; police and garbage collection," Baghdad journalist Mohammad al-Dulaymi told IPS. "Unemployment is leading many Iraqis to join the security forces despite the risk involved." According to the Iraqi government, unemployment was between 60-70 percent over the year. But not even senior army and police leaders know how many have got jobs as security men. "We do not really have reliable statistics for the number of security personnel in Iraq," a general in the ministry of interior in Baghdad, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IPS. "There are at least one million policemen who receive salaries from the ministry of interior as official policemen with salaries of 300 dollars and up. But we believe that half of them exist on paper only." The general said there is massive corruption in the ministry, and that most of the senior staff colludes in faking lists of personnel who do not exist.
Karbala organizations threaten civil disobedience over ration card items
Civil society organizations in Karbala threatened to start a campaign of civil disobedience if ration card items are reduced, an informed source said on Tuesday. "Local civil society organizations in the province held a conference on Monday evening to discuss an upcoming (government) decision on the removal of some ration card items and threatened to declare a civil disobedience if the decision is not reversed," the head of the Karbala Assembly, a Karbala-based civil society organization, told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI). Such a decision will significantly affect the standards of living of many, particularly poor people who constitute a majority of 70% of Iraqi society," he explained. In a speech before the Iraqi parliament, Iraq's Minister of Trade Fallah al-Sudani said earlier that the quantity of ration card items distributed to Iraqi families will be reduced by the beginning of next year. According to the new plan announced by the minister, food and essential items on ration cards will be limited to sugar, rice, cooking oil, flour and milk, while items including tea, baby milk, soap, tomato sauce, detergents will be removed.
No newspapers in Baghdad till Wednesday
Iraqi newspapers did not appear on Wednesday and they will cease publication in Baghdad till next Wednesday because of Eid al-Adha or the Greater Bairam and the Christmas holidays for Iraqi Muslims and Christians. Eid al-Adha, which marks the end of the Hajj (pilgrimage) season to Makkah, lasts for four days, however, the Iraqi government decided last Monday to extend the official holiday till Tuesday to allow Iraqi Christians celebrate the Christmas.
250 former Iraq detainees claim torture in new US lawsuit
More than 250 people once held in Iraqi prisons, including the notorious Abu Ghraib, have filed suit against a US military contractor for their alleged torture, attorneys said Tuesday. The Center for Constitutional Rights said a lawsuit was filed in US federal court on Monday asking for millions of dollars in compensatory and punitive damages against CACI International Inc. of Arlington, Virginia. The complaint, filed in the name 256 former detainees who were released without ever being charged with a crime, alleges that CACI interrogators who were sent to Iraqi prisons directed and engaged in torture between 2003-2004. The lawsuit charges that the detainees were repeatedly beaten, sodomized, threatened with rape, kept naked in their cells, subjected to electric shock and attacked by unmuzzled dogs, among other humiliations. The court action also names two CACI employees -- Stephen Stefanowski, knowns as Big Steve, and Daniel Johnson, known as DJ -- accusing them of participating in the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
Iraq Sunnis remember Saddam
SUPPORTERS laid flowers on Saddam Hussein's grave in central Iraq overnight to mark the first anniversary according to the Muslim calendar of the ousted president's execution.
Video: UK has left behind murder and chaos, says Basra police chief
The full scale of the chaos left behind by British forces in Basra was revealed yesterday as the city's police chief described a province in the grip of well-armed militias strong enough to overpower security forces and brutal enough to behead women considered not sufficiently Islamic. As British forces finally handed over security in Basra province, marking the end of 4½ years of control in southern Iraq, Major General Jalil Khalaf, the new police commander, said the occupation had left him with a situation close to mayhem.
Audio: Ghaith Abdul-Ahad disputes the rosy US analysis
REPORTS – IRAQI MILITIAS, POLITICIANS, POWER BROKERS
PM says government resolved to realize economic achievements
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Wednesday said that the Iraqi government is resolved to realize economic achievements next year after the success realized in the security field. This came during his meeting with General George Casey, the U.S. army chief of staff. "There is a significant political and economic development in Iraq now," the premier also said in a statement released by his office and received by the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI).
REPORTS – US/UK/OTHERS IN IRAQ
Saudis biggest group of al Qaeda Iraq fighters: study
Most al Qaeda fighters in Iraq are from Saudi Arabia and Libya and many are university-aged students, said a study released on Wednesday by researchers at the U.S. Army's West Point military academy. … The researchers at West Point's Combating Terrorism Center found that 41 percent of the fighters were Saudi nationals. Libyan nationals accounted for the second largest group entering Iraq in that time period with about 19 percent of the total, followed by Syrians and Yemenis each at 8 percent, Algerians with 7 percent and Moroccans at 6 percent.
Turkey says U.S. intelligence led to Iraq raids
U.S. Senate Approves $70 Billion For Iraq-Afghanistan
White House downplays war's staggering cost
Study analyzes news coverage of Iraq in US media
Only about 3 percent of the stories filed were about the lives of ordinary Iraqi citizens, the project found. That reflected a frustration reporters frequently mentioned in the survey that violence prevented them from moving freely enough to tell that story, Rosenstiel said.
3rd top official departs State Dept. under criticism
The head of the State Department's embassy-building operation, responsible for the troubled $740 million new embassy in Baghdad, announced Wednesday that he's stepping down.
Corporate oil giants scramble to plunder Iraq’s energy reserves
When Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki finally sent the so-called “oil law” to be passed by the parliament in July, George Bush phoned to congratulate him personally. Maliki’s failure to push the legislation through had been a source of growing frustration and anger in Washington for more than a year. The law was needed to legitimise one of the main aims of the illegal US invasion of Iraq—to allow foreign corporations to assume control over the country’s state-owned energy resources on the most lucrative of terms.
Bush’s congratulations—made on behalf of the major oil corporations and their share-holders—were premature however. The rival Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish factions of the Iraqi ruling elite have still not agreed on the legislation due to their bitter and increasingly intractable differences over how to divide the revenues that would flow to the Baghdad government. Five months after the law was sent for ratification, it is still tied up in debates within a parliamentary committee, with few indications as to when, or in what form, it will be passed.
IRAQI REFUGEES
Palestinian refugees from Iraq stranded in desert camp
Hundreds of Palestinian refugees who've been forced out of their homes in Iraq are stranded in a remote stretch of the Syrian desert, where they're living in tents that offer little shelter against blinding sandstorms and the biting cold of winter nights, according to humanitarian aid workers and refugees. Syrian authorities have barred the Palestinians from leaving the Tanaf refugee camp near the border with Iraq. Journalists aren't allowed to visit. But United Nations officials and camp residents reached by phone described deteriorating health conditions, with an increase in illnesses related to contaminated water and skin afflictions caused by unhygienic conditions. Many children have lice, the Palestinians said, and the elderly suffer from diabetes and high blood pressure. They survive solely through handouts from the U.N. and Arab humanitarian groups.
Iraqi musician Naseer Shamma launches fund-raising campaign
Arab Iraqi oud player Naseer Shamma launches fund-raising campaign for refugees in Syria and Jordan.
How to Help Iraqi Refugees
ANOTHER Way to help: The Collateral Repair Project
Quote of the day: “One thing is for certain: There won't be any more mass graves and torture rooms and rape rooms.” ~ George W. Bush [press availability in Monterrey, Mexico, Jan. 12, 2004]
”Shamefully we now learn that Saddam's torture chambers reopened under new management, U.S. management.” ~ Senator Edward Kennedy
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