The DoD is reporting a new death unreported by the military. Spc. Andrew P. Wade died from a non-combat related incident in Kunduz province, Afghanistan on Wednesday, March 9th.
Reported security incidents
Baghdad:
#1: Gunmen swooped on a Baghdad jewelry shop on Thursday in a failed heist that left four policemen and two civilians dead, an Iraqi Interior Ministry source said. The attempted robbery in the AlBindouk area of northeast Baghdad also wounded two policemen and a civilian, the source said on condition of anonymity. The gunmen escaped but without any loot.
#2: “An explosive charge exploded targeting a police vehicle patrol in al-Mashtal region, east of Baghdad, killing a cop and wounding two,” he said.
Missan Prv:
#1: The police found the body of a civilian man showing signs of having been shot in Missan province on Thursday, a local security source said. “The body, which showed signs of having been shot in the neck, was removed to a morgue,” the source told Aswat al-Iraq news agency.
Afghanistan: "The Forgotten War"
#1: A relative of Afghan President Hamid Karzai has been killed by international forces, Karzai's brother and officials said on Thursday. The president's brother, Ahmad Wali Karzai, told AFP that a relative, who he described as our father's cousin, was shot dead near his home in the family's village in southern Kandahar province by the US-led NATO force overnight. It was a mistake, Ahmad Wali Karzai said. The forces conducted an operation, he was at his home, he came out and was shot. The president was said to be extremely sad at the news, his spokesman said.
#2: Separately, police in northern Afghanistan said on Thursday that German troops based in the area had accidentally killed one woman and injured another during an exchange of fire. The incident happened in the Chahar Dara district of Kunduz province Wednesday when German troops came under attack and retaliated with gunfire, provincial police chief Abdul Rahman Sayedkhili said. German troops patrolling Chahar Dara district opened fire on civilian houses yesterday afternoon, Sayedhkhili told AFP. One woman was killed and another was injured as a result. A spokesman for German troops in Kunduz, Lieutenant Colonel Klaus Geier, said he could not confirm the death but added that an investigation has been launched. Afghan and NATO officials said they were investigating the incident.
#3: The Afghan government says a suicide bomber has killed the police chief of northern Kunduz province and two of his bodyguards. The Taliban have claimed responsibility for the attack. Once relatively quiet, Kunduz and other parts of northern and eastern Afghanistan have seen an increase in violence in recent months. A government statement on Friday says police chief Abdul Rahman Sayedkhili was killed as he walked through the streets of Kunduz city late on Thursday. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the bombing in an e-mail. Police say another 10 people were wounded.
#4: A child and a man were injured as a blast took place near a bridge in northwest Pakistan city of Peshawar on Friday, local sources said. The explosive material was panted near a bridge, local residents said, adding several nearby shops were damaged in the blast.
#5: Earlier a bomb prematurely exploded inside a mosque in Peshawar, the capital of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan, shortly before prayers on Friday but caused no loss of life, local media reported.
MoD: Lance Corporal Stephen McKee
DoD: Spc. Andrew P. Wade
DoD: Cpl. Loren M. Buffalo
Friday, March 11, 2011
War News for Friday, March 11, 2011
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Give Peaceful Resistance a Chance
[Chenoweth, professor of government at Wesleyan, is co-author of the forthcoming "Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict."]
Middletown, Conn. - The rebellion in Libya stands out among the recent unrest in the Middle East for its widespread violence: unlike the protesters in Tunisia or Egypt, those in Libya quickly gave up pursuing nonviolent change and became an armed rebellion.
And while the fighting in Libya is far from over, it's not too early to ask a critical question: which is more effective as a force for change, violent or nonviolent resistance? Unfortunately for the Libyan rebels, research shows that nonviolent resistance is much more likely to produce results, while violent resistance runs a greater risk of backfiring.
Indeed, a study I recently conducted with Maria J. Stephan, now a strategic planner at the State Department, compared the outcomes of hundreds of violent insurgencies with those of major nonviolent resistance campaigns from 1900 to 2006; we found that over 50 percent of the nonviolent movements succeeded, compared with about 25 percent of the violent insurgencies.
Why? For one thing, people don't have to give up their jobs, leave their families or agree to kill anyone to participate in a nonviolent campaign. That means such movements tend to draw a wider range of participants, which gives them more access to members of the regime, including security forces and economic elites, who often sympathize with or are even relatives of protesters.
What's more, oppressive regimes need the loyalty of their personnel to carry out their orders. Violent resistance tends to reinforce that loyalty, while civil resistance undermines it. When security forces refuse orders to, say, fire on peaceful protesters, regimes must accommodate the opposition or give up power - precisely what happened in Egypt.
This is why the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, took such great pains to use armed thugs to try to provoke the Egyptian demonstrators into using violence, after which he could have rallied the military behind him.
But where Mr. Mubarak failed, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi succeeded: what began as peaceful movement became, after a few days of brutal crackdown by his corps of foreign militiamen, an armed but disorganized rebel fighting force. A widely supported popular revolution has been reduced to a smaller group of armed rebels attempting to overthrow a brutal dictator. These rebels are at a major disadvantage, and are unlikely to succeed without direct foreign intervention.
If the other uprisings across the Middle East remain nonviolent, however, we should be optimistic about the prospects for democracy there.
Although the change is not immediate, our data show that from 1900 to 2006, 35 percent to 40 percent of authoritarian regimes that faced major nonviolent uprisings had become democracies five years after the campaign ended, even if the campaigns failed to cause immediate regime change. For the nonviolent campaigns that succeeded, the figure increases to well over 50 percent.
The good guys don't always win, but their chances increase greatly when they play their cards well. Nonviolent resistance is about finding and exploiting points of leverage in one's own society. Every dictatorship has vulnerabilities, and every society can find them.
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I wish Iraq had seriously tried non-violent resistance against the US invasion and occupation. I will always believe that it would have ended much better for them. But they abandoned non-violent resistance rather quickly.
Obama just made a speech where he said that Gaddafi's killing of civilians has to stop - I want to know when is the Obama administration killing of civilians going to stop????
Cousin of Afghan President Is Killed in NATO Raid
I really don't think it's fair to blame the Libyan protesters for the violent turn -- Qaddafi attacked them. And Iraqis did try non-violent resistance, but the U.S. army slaughtered them. Remember?
Non-violent resistance only works under certain circumstances. Without going into a long dissertation on this, basically, there have to be constraints on the ability or willingness of the authorities to respond with violence. If they are willing to kill, maim, and torture, non-violence doesn't work. And, sad to say, quite possibly nothing works. Qaddafi could well hold on indefinitely.
yeah, the people in Fallujah tried non-violence for about a week or so. And the US forces killed about 19 - if I recall correctly.
And then they tried violence for years. And the US forces killed far more than 19, and they are still dying today from cancers and birth defects.
And recently in Libya - the "protesters" showed up with RPGs and other major weapons right from the start. There was no chanting of "peaceful, peaceful" like there was in Egypt.
And the fact that they showed up with weapons right away made it more likely, and more acceptable, for the Libyan government to respond with violence.
Using non-violent tactics makes it harder for the violent authorities to use violence in response. This does not mean they will use NO violence, just makes it harder for them.
And people die under either strategy, but a lot more people die in violent revolutions - and as the research shows, the nonviolent revolutions are twice as likely to be successful.
PRESS RELEASE from Amnesty International
March, 10 2011
Iraqi activists' torture allegations spark fears for detained protesters
A group of anti-government protesters missing since they were arrested this week in Baghdad are feared to be at risk of torture, after other recently released protestors told Amnesty International they were tortured in detention.
A group of anti-government protesters missing since they were arrested this week in Baghdad are feared to be at risk of torture, after other recently released protestors told Amnesty International they were tortured in detention.
At least 10 people were detained on Monday while returning home from a Baghdad protest against unemployment, government corruption and poor social services.
The arrests came as other protesters who were detained last month told Amnesty International that they were tortured in detention.
"We fear there is a real risk of torture for those arrested on Monday, especially as their whereabouts in detention is yet to be disclosed. This seems to be following a pattern of protesters being detained and tortured as the Iraqi government tries to crackdown on demonstrations," said Malcolm Smart, Amnesty International's director for the Middle East and North Africa.
"The authorities must immediately reveal where these latest detainees are held and release them if they have been detained solely for exercising their legitimate right to protest."
Those detained on Monday include Ala' Sayhoud, Ma'an Thamer, 'Ali Abdel Zahra' and Muhammad Kadhim Finjan. They were arrested by Iraqi security forces in Baghdad's al-Batawin area after they participated in a demonstration in the city's Tahrir Square on Monday.
Two recently released activists have told Amnesty International that they were tortured or otherwise ill-treated in detention after they were arrested in connection with recent protests.
Abdel-Jabbar Shaloub Hammadi, who was detained without charge for 12 days following his arrest on 24 February, the day before a planned 'Day of Rage' protest in Baghdad, was beaten and tortured throughout his first five days in detention.
"They beat me a lot and kept me suspended every day for nearly 15 hours. In one method they tied my hands and legs together behind by back and left me hanging by a rope; in the other they suspended me from the wrists and left me standing on the tips of my toes on a chair - both were very painful," Hammadi told Amnesty International.
Journalist Hadi al-Mehdi, who was arrested on 25 February, told Amnesty International he received electric shocks to his feet and was threatened with rape during his interrogation by police.
"The Iraqi authorities claim that they are stamping out torture but as these testimonies show it continues to be used against detainees and the perpetrators appear to believe they can act with impunity," said Malcolm Smart.
"The authorities must order an immediate independent investigation into all allegations of torture and those responsible for torture must be exposed and brought to justice."
As calls for reform persist in the country, Amnesty International has also called on the Iraqi authorities respect the right of assembly and freedom of expression.
PRE01/128/2011
Thursday 10 March 2011
Iraq parliament urges probe into US attacks
The speaker in the Iraqi parliament, Osama al-Nujaifi, has called for an inquiry into attacks on Iraqi civilians by the US military forces.
Nujaifi called on the Security and Defense Committee to investigate recent US raids in Kirkuk and al-Amarah.
He said the attacks had been in violation of Washington's security agreement with Baghdad.
During the attacks a youth was killed in a village in the northern governorate of Salah ad Din.
Since the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, more than 1,300,000 people have been killed in Iraq.
Nujaifi noted that in that time nearly 5 million people had been displaces and five million children orphaned.
http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/?sid=754105
That's really good for us.
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VIOLENCE BEGETS VIOLENCE
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ALWAYS
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Well, we could argue all night about how things might have turned out if the Iraqi people had stuck to a course of non-violence...... but there is no doubt as to how things did turn out with the violent US military showing up, followed by violent al-qaeda wanttabees, and responded to by violent attacks from Iraqi nationalists.
It is a horrific disaster of almost unimaginable human suffering and death..... that continues to this day ..... that has spawned a violent Iraqi government..... that has spawned an increase in violence among US veterans of the Iraqi occupation and destruction ..... and you can be sure that the atrocities visited on Iraqis will be visited on Americans too - for example, Bradley Manning is being forced into nudity, just like Abu Ghraib. The sexual perverts in the US military are going to behave at home just like they did in Iraq.
Listen, children, to a story
That was written long ago,
'Bout a kingdom on a mountain
And the valley-folk below.
On the mountain was a treasure
Buried deep beneath the stone,
And the valley-people swore
They'd have it for their very own.
Go ahead and hate your neighbor,
Go ahead and cheat a friend.
Do it in the name of Heaven,
You can justify it in the end.
There won't be any trumpets blowing
Come the judgement day,
On the bloody morning after....
One tin soldier rides away.
So the people of the valley
Sent a message up the hill,
Asking for the buried treasure,
Tons of gold for which they'd kill.
Came an answer from the kingdom,
"With our brothers we will share
All the secrets of our mountain,
All the riches buried there."
Go ahead and hate your neighbor,
Go ahead and cheat a friend.
Do it in the name of Heaven,
You can justify it in the end.
There won't be any trumpets blowing
Come the judgment day,
On the bloody morning after....
One tin soldier rides away.
Now the valley cried with anger,
"Mount your horses! Draw your sword!"
And they killed the mountain-people,
So they won their just reward.
Now they stood beside the treasure,
On the mountain, dark and red.
Turned the stone and looked beneath it...
"Peace on Earth" was all it said.
Go ahead and hate your neighbor,
Go ahead and cheat a friend.
Do it in the name of Heaven,
You can justify it in the end.
There won't be any trumpets blowing
Come the judgement day,
On the bloody morning after....
One tin soldier rides away.
Go ahead and hate your neighbor,
Go ahead and cheat a friend.
Do it in the name of Heaven,
You can justify it in the end.
There won't be any trumpets blowing
Come the judgment day,
On the bloody morning after....
One tin soldier rides away.
maybe thewiz will show up and justify the destruction of Iraq one more time.... as the song says, you can justify any damn evil thing if you try.
from a photo caption:
Ghaith Abdul-Ahad is seen in this undated photograph received in London on March 10, 2011. Britain's Guardian newspaper said on Thursday it was making urgent attempts to trace one of its correspondents who has gone missing in Libya where he has been covering the recent unrest. Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, an Iraqi national, who had been reporting from western Libya for the last two weeks, had not been in contact with the paper since Sunday, the Guardian said on its website. REUTERS/Martin Argles/Guardian/Handout
I have followed the work of Ghaith since 2003, when he was a blogger in Iraq (one of the first), and his former job was architecture. He went on to be a great journalist and photo journalist, and some of his work is in the book UNEMBEDDED. I corresponded with him via email a few times.
I hope he is okay, but something tells me he is not. I am very upset about this --- he saw so much violence in the last eight years, and even though he left Iraq and moved to Britain, he kept going back to war zones.
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