*IRAQ: latest news and developments

[Barking_Mad]

U.S. Military Relies on Guidance of 'Sources' in Tall Afar

TALL AFAR, Iraq, Sept. 12 -- A masked teenager in an Iraqi army uniform walked slowly through a crowd of 400 detainees captured Monday, studying each face and rendering his verdict with a simple hand gesture, like a Roman emperor deciding the fate of gladiators.

A thumb pointed down meant the suspect was not thought to be an insurgent and would be released by U.S. soldiers. A thumb pointed up meant a man would be removed from the concertina wire-encased pen, handcuffed with tape or plastic ties and taken by truck to a military base to be interrogated.

"Another bad guy right here," an American interpreter shouted when the masked Iraqi singled out a man in a yellow dishdasha , or traditional gown, who shook his head and protested in Turkish. A captive who was spared exhaled with relief and placed his hand on his heart.

This is how the 10-day-old invasion of Tall Afar unfolded Monday. After two days of relatively uneventful patrols in the abandoned neighborhood of Sarai, where commanders had expected insurgents to be massed for a fight, U.S. and Iraqi forces turned north in the morning, to neighborhoods they had already cleared, and found hundreds of men who appeared to be of military age and fighters believed to have slipped through their cordons.

Eventually, 52 men were placed in the open backs of flatbed trucks bound for Camp Sykes, about seven miles south of this northwestern city. During the attack on insurgents here -- the largest urban assault in Iraq since the siege of Fallujah in November -- the only significant clashes came in the early days, when thousands of American and Iraqi troops stormed the city and U.S. jets waged a relentless bombing campaign.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Iraq factions may be headed for showdown.

[T]ensions are clearly rising, fueled by old rivalries, new "death squad" killings and vastly differing visions for the new Iraq. Perhaps most troubling, no leader has emerged with a vision that transcends his own community's narrow interests plus the political stature to carry it out. Instead, the bitterness that welled up among Kurds and Shiites during the years of Saddam's tyranny have produced a constricted atmosphere of retribution rather than reconciliation....
Colloquially, Sunni Arabs often refer to the security forces by their old militia names -- the Kurdish peshmerga -- or the Shiite Badr Brigade which fought against Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war. In language heard with increasing frequency in Iraq, a Sunni woman told Associated Press Television News last week that her cousin was arrested by "Badr forces, some in police uniforms ... just for being a Sunni." "They told him that 'Sunni' equals terrorism," she said.

 

[Barking_Mad]

No Comments: Raed

In a sad sign of the times, Raed Jarrar and friends, the Iraqi bloggers, have closed their comment section. They were alarmed by the recent launching of a lawsuit against a site for reader comments at the web page. They were also alarmed by a more draconian form of the phenomenon. What, they ask, would happen if one of the commenters made deep criticism of the US troop presence. They fear the new Iraqi government might hold them accountable if a commenter supports the guerrilla movement (Raed's brother was already detained for reader comments that appeared at his blog.)

Once upon a time, some of us dreamed that the internet and the blogging revolution could play a positive part in growing civil liberties there. In the end, the repressive apparatus of the state trumped all that.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Iraq Killings Raise Fear Of Civil War: Sectarian Murders Rise In Baghdad, Beyond

"The number of gunshot cases we see now is huge," said Professor Abed Razaq Ibaidi, acting director for the Central Institute of Forensic Medicine in Baghdad, the largest morgue in the country. Doctors believe that most gunshot victims are the targets of assassination because they have multiple bullet wounds, many of them around the chest. "Most of the time they use machine guns, and it [seems] intentional because ... they shoot more than once around the chest area," Ibaidi said....

Once people start to leave, the tide of instability can be hard to reverse, said Ed Joseph, a fellow at the Wilson Institute who worked in Bosnia-Herzegovina during that Balkan country's war in the mid-1990s. He said the likelihood of civil war increases if, after attacks targeting a community, other members of the minority population flee.

 

[Barking_Mad]

From last weekend

Many Insurgents Escape U.S.-Iraqi Sweep

TAL AFAR, Iraq (AP) - Fighting eased Sunday, the second day of a U.S. and Iraqi sweep through the militant stronghold of Tal Afar near the Syrian border, as insurgents melted into the countryside, many escaping through a tunnel network dug under an ancient northern city.

Iraqi and U.S. military officials vowed to expand the offensive.

The 8,500-strong Iraqi-U.S. force continued house-to-house searches, and military leaders said the assault would push all along the Syrian frontier and in the Euphrates River valley.

Cities and towns along the fabled river are bastions of the insurgency, a collection of foreign fighters and disaffected Sunni Muslims, many of them Saddam Hussein loyalists.

About 5,000 Iraqi soldiers, backed by a 3,500-strong American armored force, reported 156 insurgents killed and 246 captured. The force discovered a big bomb factory, 18 weapons caches and the tunnel network in the ancient Sarai neighborhood of Tal Afar, 60 miles east of the Syrian border.

``The terrorists had seen it coming (and prepared) tunnel complexes to be used as escape routes,'' Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch said in Baghdad.

Lynch said operations in Tal Afar were part of a much larger, nationwide plan to destroy insurgent and al-Qaida bases, which included ongoing operations in Mosul, Qaim and the western town of Rutba.

A group claiming to be an offshoot of al-Qaida said it would retaliate against the government and security forces in the capital.

``The Taifa al-Mansoura Army has decided to ... strike at strategic and other targets of importance for the occupation and the infidels in Baghdad by using chemical and unconventional weapons developed by the mujahedeen, unless the military operations in Tal Afar stop within 24 hours,'' the statement said.

It was not immediately possible to determine the authenticity of the statement, which was posted on a Web site known for its militant contents.

Iraqi Defense Minister Sadoun al-Dulaimi said the sweep of Tal Afar was carried out at the request of city residents and would be a model as his forces attacked other insurgent-held cities in quick succession.

 

[Barking_Mad]

More Than 160 Dead In Iraq Bombings - 542 Wounded In Attacks Around Baghdad

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- More than 160 deaths are now confirmed in Baghdad, after a series of insurgent bomb attacks Wednesday.

Al-Qaida in Iraq is claiming responsibility. It links the attacks to the recent killing of about 200 militants by U.S. and Iraqi forces.

The first attack -- and the deadliest -- killed at least 112 people in a heavily Shiite neighborhood. The suicide attacker drove a van into a group of construction workers and detonated the bomb.

Iraq's prime minister said Iraqi forces have arrested two insurgents in connection with that bombing. One is described as a Palestinian, and the other a Libyan.

There were more than a dozen bombings, starting shortly after dawn and continuing until late afternoon. They coincided with an announcement from Iraqi lawmakers that the country's draft constitution is in its final form, and will be sent to the U.N. for printing and distribution.

The Health Ministry earlier Wednesday reported 152 people killed and 542 wounded.

A lawmaker called the attack "barbaric and gruesome."

It was the deadliest single attack in Iraq since February.

Iraqi police said another big blast was a suicide car bomber going for an American convoy. Witnesses said the explosion sent black smoke billowing into the sky between the main rail station and a hotel that houses foreign contractors.

A police lieutenant said the bomber tried to get a passing U.S. military convoy, but it's not clear if any Americans were hurt.

In another bloody attack, gunmen executed 17 men in a village north of Baghdad. A police lieutenant said the gunmen detained the victims after searching the village. The dead had been handcuffed and blindfolded, and were later shot at a site near the village.

 

[Barking_Mad]

'This is ten times worse than under Saddam'

“There was a very big blast while I was standing there waiting. I was knocked unconscious and woke up here in the hospital and saw my cousin beside me.

“It took me a while to figure out where I was and what happened, then I asked about my brother. My cousin told me that he had been taken to another hospital as his injury was serious. I hope he is fine. We don’t have any relatives here and our family in Nasiriya must be very worried about us now.

“It really makes you sad and angry when you find yourself a target. You see your friends and relatives getting killed daily without knowing who is doing that and why. What happened was just part of the deteriorating situation in Iraq. After the fall of the regime we thought Iraq was going to be a big workshop, then we ended up in a situation which is ten times worse than it used to be under Saddam.”

 

[Barking_Mad]

Kill at Least 31 in Iraq

Two suicide car bombers struck within a minute of each other just a half mile apart in south Baghdad shortly before noon Thursday, killing at least seven policemen and raising the day's bombing death toll in the capital to at least 31, police said.

Families flee Tal Afar fighting

An estimated 6,600 families have fled the northern Iraq city of Tal Afar in recent months amid a rise in the insurgency there, a senior official with Iraq's Ministry of Displacement and Migration told CNN Monday.

 

[Barking_Mad]

BBC says deaths from yesterdays explosions...........

The Iraqi health ministry say that the death toll from that blast and others across the city reached 182, with 679 injured.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4247646.stm

 

[Barking_Mad]

Shi'ite sheikh found dead in Latifiya

A Shi'ite sheikh was found dead in Latifiya, a small town to the south of Baghdad. He was kidnapped by gunmen two days ago, one of his relatives said.

Senior Shi'ite official among four killed in Hilla

Sheikh Mehdi al-Attar, a senior official in the Shi'ite Dawa Party, was killed when gunmen attacked his vehicle near Hilla, 100 km (62 miles) south of Baghdad. A police source said three others were also killed in the attack.

 

[Barking_Mad]

US bombs Ramadi

US warplanes have bombed targets in the Iraqi town of Ramadi while US forces have clashed with fighters in the city, Aljazeera is reporting. US jets struck al-Bufarraj and Sufiya areas in Ramadi city at around 7.30am (0430 GMT) on Thursday, wounding an unknown number of civilians, independent Iraqi journalist Muhammad Hassan said. Fierce clashes erupted following the raids in the eastern gate of Ramadi, near the US military headquarters and in the big mosque area in the city centre. A US military base, nicknamed "the southern palace", in western Ramadi, also came under mortar attack, Hassan told Aljazeera. Hassan described the city as almost deserted, with only fighters deployed in some areas and US helicopters and warplanes hovering overhead.

Doctors in Ramadi hospital called for blood donayopms after a number of wounded Iraqi civilians were brought in, Hassan said. Some mosques also called on citizens through loudspeakers to donate blood for the injured. Thursday's strikes came two days after US aircraft repeatedly struck fighter targets in the Iraqi town of Karabila, near the Syrian border, as part of an Iraqi-US operation to flush out fighters from various Iraqi towns.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Preacher killed in Mosul

The preacher at a Shi'ite mosque was killed and three civilians were wounded when a bomb left at the front door of the mosque exploded in Mosul

Six bodies found around Baghdad

The bodies of three people shot dead were found in the Shula district of Baghdad. Three more bodies were found in the New Baghdad district. Police said they were also shot dead.

Four attacks wounds 10 American Soldiers Wednesday

At least six attacks targeted U.S. forces, Iraqi authorities said. The U.S. military said there were four direct attacks on Americans, with 10 soldiers wounded. No U.S. deaths were reported.

Polish military base in Iraq under mortar attack

The Polish military base in Diwaniya, in the south-central stabilization zone in Iraq has been shelled with mortar fire during the night. One of the shots hit the premises directly, however, the explosion caused no injuries among the personnel.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Roadside bomb targets police in Kirkuk, kills two

In the ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk, 180 miles north of Baghdad, insurgents detonated a roadside bomb next to a passing patrol, killing two police officers and wounding four, said Col. Anwar Hassan, head of the local security unit.

Policeman killed in Samarra

A police major was shot to death in Samarra, north of Baghdad, after being abducted by masked gunmen.

Policeman killed in Baqouba

In Baqouba, one policeman was killed and three injured in separate attacks by insurgents using mortars and small-arms fire

Murdered Policeman found in northern Baghdad

In northern Baghdad, police said they found the body of a policeman who had been handcuffed and shot in the head.

Policeman killed in neighborhood of Saydiya

A gunfight between insurgents and paramilitary police broke out in the capital's southern neighborhood of Saydiya. One policeman was killed and another wounded, a spokesman said

 

[Barking_Mad]

From Tuesday

Meanwhile, in Iraq

For the last several days at least 6,000 US soldiers along with approximately 4,000 Iraqi soldiers (Read-members of the Kurdish Peshmerga and Shia Badr Army) were laying siege to the city of Tal-Afar, near Mosul in northern Iraq. It is estimated that 90% of the residents have left their homes because of the violence and destruction of the siege, as well as to avoid home raids and snipers.

The Fallujah model is being applied yet again, albeit on a smaller scale. I haven’t received any reports yet of biometrics being used (retina scans, finger printing, bar coding of human beings) like in Fallujah, but there are other striking similarities to the tactics used in November.

While the US military claims to have killed roughly 200 “terrorists” in the operation, reports from the ground state that most of the fighters inside the city had long since left to avoid direct confrontation with the overwhelming military force (a basic tenet of guerrilla warfare).

Again like Fallujah, most of the families who fled are staying in refugee camps outside the city in tents amidst horrible conditions in the inferno-like heat of the Iraqi summer.

The LA Times reported that Ezzedin Dowla, a Turkmen leader in the area said, “Families are homeless and the government has not provided any shelter, food or drink for them.” Nor has the US military.

The targets of this military operation are the Sunni Turkmen who are politically on the side of the Sunni Arabs. Most Sunnis will be voting against the constitution during the coming vote of October, 15th.

The Cheney Administration is desperate for something it can spin as “good news” from Iraq; thus, it most certainly behooves them to have the referendum on the constitution to boast about. But in order to do so, the voting ability and power of the Sunni (and Sunni Turkmen) must be severely compromised, as well as punishment meted out for rightfully assuming what will be a Sunni no-vote on the constitution.

Both the Cheney Administration and its current puppet-government in Iraq benefit from destroying the voting (and living) ability of the majority of people in the “Sunni triangle,” so we have the operation in Tal-Afar, most likely to be followed by similar operations in Al-Qa’im, Haditha, Samarra, and possibly more.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Iraq War Critic Deported to US

CANBERRA, Sep 15 (IPS) - The Australian government deported, Thursday, Scott Parkin, a soft-spoken peace and environmental activist, of the Texas-based Houston Global Awareness Collective, for participation in non-violence and civil disobedience workshops in this country.

In a debate in the Australian Senate, Greens Senator Bob Brown, described the adverse security assessment by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) and the subsequent decision to deport Parkin, while refusing to provide any reasons either to him or his lawyers, as ''outrageous''.

''What has the government to hide here? It is the government that is hiding and being covert and being dangerous. Not Mr Parkin, it is the Howard government that is the dangerous entity here,'' he said.

Parkin, who completed a master's degree in history on the Vietnam War, is an outspoken critic of the U.S.-led war in Iraq. On Saturday, Parkin was arrested en route to a workshop in Melbourne where he was to speak on non-violent activism against the Iraq war.

Late August, he spoke at a street theatre protest outside the Sydney office of 'KBR' , a subsidiary of the contracting company, Halliburton, which has been awarded substantial deals by the U.S. government in Iraq. ''Halliburton and its subsidiary KBR are essentially the poster children of war-profiteering,'' he said.

In a statement, written in prison on Wednesday, Parkin said that ''the only information that I have received is that I have been assessed as 'a direct or indirect risk to Australian national security'.''

 

[Barking_Mad]

Mayor Killed in Iskandariya

In Iskandariya, about 30 miles (45 kilometers) south of Baghdad, gunmen stormed the residence of the district mayor Amer Mohammad al-Khafaji, killing him and four of his bodyguards.

Shiite imam killed on the highway

A Shiite imam, Sheikh Fadhil al-Lami, was killed around 8:30 a.m. (12:30 a.m. ET) when gunmen opened fire on his car on the Qanant highway in the east of the capital. Al-Lami was the imam of a mosque in the Sadr City district of Baghdad.

Gunmen kill Iraqi workers, government official

Gunmen shot dead two labourers and a government official in drive-by shootings in Baghdad on Friday...the same gunmen opened fire on a vehicle carrying officials from the transport ministry, killing one and wounding another

 

[oi2002]

Pepe Escobar in Asia Times explains Black Wednesday:

According to the Zarqawi audio, "The al-Qaeda Organization in the The Land of Two Rivers [Iraq] is declaring all-out war on the Rafidha, wherever they are in Iraq". Rafidha is the pejorative Arabic term referring to Shi'ites as apostates. "As for the government, servants of the crusaders headed by [Prime Minister] Ibrahim al-Jaafari, they have declared a war on Sunnis in Tal Afar." So, following Zarqawi's logic, the civil war against Shi'ites is a response to what happened in Tal Afar.
...
The voice on the Zarqawi tape warns Sunni Arabs to "wake up from your slumber ... the war to exterminate Sunnis will never end".

The appeal to sectarian hatred is a rational recruiting strategy espeacially in Saudi heartlands of the Jihad.

There are rumors Al Z is broadening his network. In the LA Times

Mowaffak Rubaie, Iraq's national security advisor and a former Shiite activist, said "there's no doubt" that once-nationalistic elements of the insurgency were drifting toward Zarqawi and his extremist Salafi sect, also known as Wahhabism, which seeks to establish a puritanical society modeled on early Islamic times.
...
Officials said it was not clear how dedicated these Iraqis were to the broader Al Qaeda cause, or whether they would be willing to travel outside the country to carry out terrorist attacks in Arab or Western nations.

This smells a bit fishy to me, other sources have been discounting the rumor and it sounds a little like Mowaffak is talking up Dubya's fatuous flypaper theory. The LA Times story is also rather disengenuous as Ansar Al Islam Al Z original power base was mostly made up of Salafi Iraqi Kurds not foriegner fighters.

 

[oi2002]

Via Juan Cole Gary Kamiya in Salon reviews Anthony Shadid's "Night Draws Near" a postmortem of operation Iraqi freedom.

"Perhaps history condemned the project from the start," Shadid goes on. "A grim warning lay in Iraq's modern record, shaped as it was by deprivation -- Saddam's tyranny, his wars, and the expectations of Baghdadis that they deserved better. The Iraqi impression of America was no less a problem. Whatever its intentions, the United States was a non-Muslim invader in a Muslim land. For a generation, its reputation had been molded by its alliance with Israel, its record in the 1991 Gulf War, and its support for the U.N. sanctions. Not insubstantial were decades over which the United States had grown as an antagonist in the eyes of many Arabs. Iraq had long been removed from the Arab world, isolated by dictatorship, war, and the sanctions, but it remained Arab."

The interviews with Iraqis in this book are very revealing, being rational people they search for the strategic motivations behind DC's frankly baffeling ME policies.

Wamidh says, "I won't hide my feelings -- the American invasion has nothing to do with democracy and human rights. It is basically an angry response to the events of Sept. 11, an angry response to the survival of Saddam Hussein, and it has something to do with oil interests in the area."

Seeing the invasion as primarily as an incoherrent act of rage is entirely correct.

 

[oi2002]

Peter W. Galbraith in the NYRB

President Bush's military strategy for Iraq can be summed up by a phrase in his June 28 speech to the nation: "As the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down." According to the Iraqis who run the Ministry of Defense, there is little hope that this will happen soon—or ever.

The Iraqi army nominally has 115 battalions, or 80,000 troops. This figure, often cited by those who see the Iraq occupation as a success, corresponds only to the number of troops listed on the military payroll. However, when the Ministry of Defense decided to supervise the payment of salaries, a third of the payroll was returned. (In Iraq's all-cash economy, commanders receive a lump sum for the troops under their command; this acts as an incentive for them to maintain ghost soldiers on the payroll.) One senior official estimated that barely half the nominal army actually exists.

Claims about weapons provided by the US to the Iraqi army are even more doubtful. Iraqi Ministry of Defense officials say the Americans have not provided them with records of who has been receiving weapons. Without such controls, soldiers sell their weapons on the open market where some are bought by insurgents. Most weapons captured in recent months come, I am told, from stocks supplied to the Iraqi army and police. Craig Smith reported on August 28 in The New York Times that the US military is now unwilling to provide more sophisticated weapons to the Iraqi military for fear they will be used in a civil war—or against the US.

 

[Barking_Mad]

24 bodies found in Tigris

Police found 24 bodies shot to death and dumped in the Tigris River 50 miles north of the capital, where there was no major violence on Sunday for the first time in five days.

Blast kills three Iraqi soldiers in Kirkuk

Three Iraqi soldiers were killed and four others were wounded on Sunday in a blast that targeted their patrol in Kirkuk, northern Iraq.

Bomb hits train transporting oil

Sunday Sept.18, 2005. A bomb exploded on the rail line damaging the freight train carrying oil for the refinery of Dora, and a plume of black smoke rose from the burning tankers

Shiite militiamen block centre of Basra demanding release of commander

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Armed members of a radical Shiite militia, which fought bloody battles with American troops in the past, blocked streets with barricades of burning tires in the southern city of Basra on Sunday demanding the release of one of their leaders, police said. About 200 militiamen from the Mahdi Army of cleric Muqtada Al Sadr brandished automatic weapons and rocket propelled grenades at roadblocks in the center of Iraq’s second-largest city, police Lt. Col. Karim Zaidi said. The militia demanded the provincial governor order the immediate release of their commander, Sheikh Ahmed Fartosi, who was arrested by British and Iraqi forces on Friday, Zaidi said. Fartosi is accused of launching raids against security forces in the city. Last year, the Mahdi Army fought US and coalition forces in the Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Karbala. The fighting ended after Al Sadr accepted a peace agreement negotiated by the Shiite clerical hierarchy.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Good article on reconstruction - or the lack of.....

Failures and frustrations in Najaf reconstruction

NAJAF, Iraq In April, Najaf's main maternity hospital received rare good news: An $8 million refurbishment program financed by the United States would begin immediately. But five months and millions of dollars later, the hospital administrators say they have little but frustration to show for it.

....

The United States has poured more than $200 million into reconstruction projects in this city, part of the $10 billion it has spent to rebuild Iraq. Najaf is widely cited by the military as one of the success stories in that effort, but U.S. officers involved in the rebuilding say that reconstruction projects here, as elsewhere in the country, are hobbled by poor planning, corrupt contractors and a lack of continuity among the rotating coalition officers charged with overseeing the spending.

"This country is filled with projects that were never completed or were completed and have never been used," said a frustrated civil affairs officer who asked not to be identified because he had not been cleared to speak about the reconstruction.

Shootings put security contractors under scrutiny in Iraq - Foreign workers firing on civilians, US officials say

........Recent shootings of Iraqi civilians, allegedly involving the legion of US, British, and other foreign security contractors operating in the country, are drawing increasing concern from Iraqi officials and US commanders who say they undermine relations between foreign military forces and Iraqi civilians.

Private security companies pervade Iraq's dusty highways, their distinctive sport-utility vehicles packed with men waving rifles to clear traffic in their path. Theirs are among the most dangerous jobs in the country: escorting convoys, guarding dignitaries, and protecting infrastructure from insurgent attacks. But their activities have drawn scrutiny here and in Washington after allegations of indiscriminate shootings and other recklessness have given rise to charges of inadequate oversight.

''These guys run loose in this country and do stupid stuff. There's no authority over them, so you can't come down on them hard when they escalate force," said Brigadier General Karl Horst, deputy commander of the Third Infantry Division, which is responsible for security in and around Baghdad. ''They shoot people, and someone else has to deal with the aftermath. It happens all over the place."

No tally of such activity has been made public, and Aegis, a British security company that helps manage contractors in Baghdad and maintains an operations center in the capital's fortified Green Zone, declined to answer questions. In the rare instances when police reports are filed, the US military is often blamed for the actions of private companies, according to Adnan Asadi, the deputy interior minister responsible for overseeing security companies. The shootings became so frequent in Baghdad this summer that Horst started keeping his own count. Between May and July, he said, he tracked at least a dozen shootings of civilians by contractors, in which six Iraqis were killed and three wounded. The bloodiest case occurred May 12 in the neighborhood of New Baghdad. A contractor opened fire on an approaching car, which then veered into a crowd. Two days after the shooting, American soldiers patrolling the same block were attacked with a roadside bomb.

On May 14, in another part of the city, private security guards working for the US Embassy shot and killed at least one Iraqi civilian while transporting diplomats from the Green Zone, according to an embassy official who spoke on condition that he not be named. Two security contractors were dismissed from their jobs over the shooting.

Employees of private security firms are immune from prosecution in Iraq, under an order adopted into law last year by Iraq's interim government. The most severe punishment that can be applied to them is revocation of their license and dismissal from their job, US officials said. Their heavy presence stems in large part from the Pentagon's attempts to keep troop numbers down by privatizing jobs that would once have been performed by American forces.

 

[slaar]

Where Did the $1bn Go?

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article313538.ece

 

[tim]

Undercover British soldiers arrested by the Iraqi police in Basra.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Armed Clashes Between Iraqis and British Soldiers in Iraqi Basra

Armed clashes burst between British soldiers and citizens of the Iraqi town of Basra when two Iraqis were held by the troops, AFP announced. According to a British military spokesman the situation is complicated. The conflict started when two Iraqis were held and locals started throwing rocks at the British soldiers.

 

[Barking_Mad]

related to UK troops being arrested....

In a separate unconfirmed incident also in Basra, two British tanks were reportedly set on fire by an Iraqi crowd. The tank crews fired warning shots over the heads of the crowd before being pelted with stones. The British soldiers then jumped from the tanks as they were torched, according to an Agence France Presse photographer who witnessed the incident. A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence would not confirm either report, but said he was aware of ongoing incidents in Basra.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-1788054,00.html

 

[Barking_Mad]

3 US Armored Vehicles Destroyed in Abu Gharib, 9 Iraqis Killed in US and Resistance Attacks

BAGHDAD - A suicide car bomber attacked a US convoy near Abu Gharib (Abu Ghraib) prison west of Baghdad on Saturday, destroying three vehicles, and resistance fighters shelled the notorious lockup with seven mortar rounds, police said. In the same area, resistance fighters fired rocket-propelled grenades at a second US convoy, damaging three armored vehicles, said police Lt. Alaa Hussein.

The US military issued no immediate casualty reports in any of the incidents.

In Baquba, 60 kilometers (35 miles) northeast of Baghdad, one man was killed and six wounded when a suicide bomber drove his car into an Iraqi army patrol. And US troops raided two suspected Al Qaeda safe houses in the northern Iraqi town of Ubaydi and found a car bomb, weapons, a large amount of ammunition and bomb-making materials, the US military said in a statement. During the search, US forces came under fire and killed one attacker.

Saturday's attacks occurred after three straight days of bombings and shootings in Baghdad and elsewhere, in which more than 200 people were killed and 600 wounded in an stunning outburst of sectarian violence. In Friday sermons, some Shi'i and Sunni clerics condemned the rash of attacks but also slammed the US-backed Iraqi government and American forces, holding them responsible for the violence because they were unable to improve security in the country 2 1/2 years after the invasion. Shaikh Abdul-Zahraa Al Suwaidi, a Shi'i, said the violence had tarnished the image of Muslims. He said, however, that the continued presence of 140,000 US troops was fueling sectarian tension.

"You have to know that Iraq will gain its security if the occupation troops leave this country," Al Suwaidi told worshippers in Baghdad's Risafa district.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Iraq Invasion Radicalized Saudi Fighters: Report

RIYADH - Hundreds of Saudi fighters who joined the insurgency in Iraq showed few signs of militancy before the U.S.-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein, according to a detailed study based on Saudi intelligence reports. The study by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), obtained by Reuters on Sunday, also said Saudis made up just 350 of the 3,000-strong foreign insurgents in Iraq -- fewer than many officials have assumed.

"Analysts and government officials in the U.S. and Iraq have overstated the size of the foreign element in the Iraqi insurgency, especially that of the Saudi contingent," it said.

The study... may offer further fuel to critics who say that instead of weakening al Qaeda, the 2003 invasion of Iraq brought fresh recruits to Osama bin Laden's network. Non-Iraqi militants made up less than 10 percent of the insurgents' ranks -- perhaps even half that -- the study said. Most were motivated by "revulsion at the idea of an Arab land being occupied by a non-Arab country".

The study by Middle East analyst Anthony Cordesman and Saudi security adviser Nawaf Obaid may offer further fuel to critics who say that instead of weakening al Qaeda, the 2003 invasion of Iraq brought fresh recruits to Osama bin Laden's network.

Iraq: Sadr spokesman issues 'vailed threat' to British forces

In other news Sunday, members of the Shiite Al Mahdi militia blockaded streets in the southern town of Basra, protesting the arrest of two of their leaders by British forces who patrol the city. The militia - loyal to cleric Muqtada Sadr, an outspoken foe of the U.S. occupation - staged violent uprisings in Baghdad, Najaf and Basra last summer that ended with a cease-fire brokered by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq's top Shiite cleric.

The militia was supposed to have disarmed, but its members have been accused of a campaign of attacks and assassinations in Basra targeting political rivals, coalition forces and former high-ranking members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party. Khalil Maliki, a Sadr spokesman in Basra, issued a thinly veiled threat of further violence if the two detained men weren't set free soon.

"We decided to give [the British] a period until we will react and they will face the Sadr people's anger," he said.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Displaced Talafar families living rough http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/0e165afd59da94da9957cfb1e58137e2.htm

DUBAI, 17 September (IRIN) - The number of families who have fled their homes in Talafar, northern Iraq, due to ongoing fighting between Coalition forces and insurgents has risen to about 5,000, the Iraqi Red Crescent Society (IRCS) said.

"We are talking 20-25,000 people," Jette Soerensen, spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva (ICRC) told IRIN on Saturday. The displaced have taken refuge in surrounding towns and villages. However, while some were staying with friends or relatives, others were living in abandoned villages or small camps, with no access to such basic items as food, water or bedding, the IRCS said in a statement. It called on all those involved in the fighting "to respect the basic rules of international humanitarian law that are applicable in Iraq".

The IRCS has set up camps around Talafar to host the displaced families. On Wednesday, it appealed urgently for US $250,000 to help those affected by the fighting, saying it was the only NGO helping them. The money, it said, was needed to buy 50,000 bottles of drinking water, 40,000 jerry cans, 20,000 kitchen sets, 150 first aid kits, 50 first aid bags, 250 portable beds, three ambulances, 50 tents and food for 10,000 families for two weeks.

"The IRCS launched the appeal directly to other societies," Soerensen said. "Meantime, we [ICRC] are supporting them by distributing whatever we have."

Hundreds of those displaced could be seen in the improvised camps, with the children suffering in the hot weather and without access to clean and potable water. A spokesperson for the Coalition forces had said earlier food and medical assistance could not be delivered to the city yet.

"If we allow the entrance of food and medicines to the city we are just feeding the insurgents. Those who are not [insurgents] and are not afraid, will ask to leave. It is not a human disaster but the prevention of it," Lt. Col. Hassan al-Medan, a senior Iraqi officer in the operation and spokesperson, said on Wednesday. The US army said on Tuesday the terrorists who were hiding in the city had suffered hundreds of casualties and were now on the run. Thousands of US forces and Iraqi troops are taking part in the operation to rout insurgents from the city.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Eight killed in Iraq car bomb blasts

Eight people have been killed as two car bombs exploded in the Iraqi towns of Mahmoudiya and Latifiya. Seven policemen and one civilian were killed in the blasts. They were travelling on the road from Baghdad to the Shi'ite holy city of Kerbala where hundreds of thousands of pilgrims are gathering for a religious festival. Violence in Iraq has been increasing recently in the run-up to a 15 October referendum on a new constitution, which Sunni Arabs fear will undermine their influence on the country.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2005/0919/iraq.html

 

[spring-peeper]

sorry for the thread disruption, but when I read this

Hundreds of those displaced could be seen in the improvised camps, with the children suffering in the hot weather and without access to clean and potable water. A spokesperson for the Coalition forces had said earlier food and medical assistance could not be delivered to the city yet.

"If we allow the entrance of food and medicines to the city we are just feeding the insurgents. Those who are not [insurgents] and are not afraid, will ask to leave. It is not a human disaster but the prevention of it," Lt. Col. Hassan al-Medan, a senior Iraqi officer in the operation and spokesperson, said on Wednesday. The US army said on Tuesday the terrorists who were hiding in the city had suffered hundreds of casualties and were now on the run. Thousands of US forces and Iraqi troops are taking part in the operation to rout insurgents from the city.

it sounded so much like the NO crisis. Right down to why the US won't help.

Sometimes, I just shake my head in disbelief.