These are the archives for the week ending 11th February 2005
Iraq to close borders next week
Iraq will seal its borders next week to prevent Shiite pilgrims flooding into the country, in the latest emergency measure intended to thwart insurgent violence. The borders will be closed between Feb 17 and Feb 22, in a move a government spokesman said was designed to coincide with the climax of Ashura, a major Shiite religious ceremony.
Suicide bombers attacked pilgrims last year in Baghdad and Karbala, killing at least 170 people. The government, battling a raging insurgency, has adopted special laws that allow it to declare curfews, close borders and detain suspects without normal legal process.
Reuters 11/2/05
Rice kicks off tour with warning to Iran
Condoleezza Rice delivered an uncompromising warning yesterday to what she described as "the loathed" Iranian government at the start of her first foreign visit as new US secretary of state. She said a military strike against Iran was not on the agenda "at this point in time" and there was still time for diplomacy to work. But she signalled there could be a dangerous showdown ahead if Iran pushed ahead with the development of a nuclear weapon.
Ms Rice, who replaces Colin Powell, refused to be drawn on whether regime change in Iran was now US policy. She has been much more hawkish about Tehran than her predecessor. Both the US and Israel would like to see the issue referred first to the UN security council with a view to imposing economic sanctions. Ms Rice gave a list of what she regards as wrong with Iran, ranging from support for "terrorism" aimed at destabilising Palestinian-Israeli talks, to an "abysmal human rights record" and fake elections.
Guardian 5/2/05
15,000 unable to vote in Mosul
Election officials admitted that at least 15,000 people had been unable to vote in and around Mosul because of violence and a shortage of ballot papers. There have been several days of protest by those who could not vote, many of whom were Christian.
Guardian 8/2/05
US has 110 nuclear weapons in UK
The US has more than 100 nuclear weapons at its Lakenheath base in Suffolk, three times the number previously thought, a respected US research agency said yesterday.
The 110 tactical nuclear weapons at the East Anglian base are among as many as 480 such weapons the US deploys in Europe.
Guardian 10/2/05
Britain accused over CIA's torture flights
UK airports are believed to be operational bases for two executive jets used by the CIA to carry out 'renditions' of terror suspects. Britain's intelligence agencies have been accused of helping America in a secret operation that is sending terror suspects to Middle Eastern countries where prisoners are routinely tortured and abused.
Since 11 September 2001, the CIA has been systematically seizing suspects and sending them, without legal process, not only to Guantanamo Bay but to authorities in countries such as Egypt, Jordan and Syria. Human rights campaigners say the system, officially known as "extraordinary rendition" is a system of torture by proxy.
A series of cases have emerged which suggest information provided by Britain about its citizens and residents has led to the capture and eventual torture of Islamic terrorist suspects. Britain is also an operational base for two executive jets regularly used by the CIA to carry out so-called "renditions". One Gulfstream jet - used for taking prisoners to Egypt and Jordan from countries including Sweden and Indonesia - has called regularly at Luton, Glasgow, Prestwick and Northolt airports.
10/2/05 Independent
US updates Iran war plan
The U.S. military is updating its war plan for Iran, a senior officer said yesterday, but he called the planning routine and said pressure on Tehran to curb a nuclear weapons program remains a diplomatic rather than military effort. "We are in that process, that normal process, of updating our war plans," said Lt. Gen. Lance Smith, deputy commander of the U.S. Central Command, which is responsible for U.S. forces across the Middle East, Central Asia and parts of North Africa. "We try to keep them current, particularly if . . . our region is active," he said.
Washington Post, 10/2/05
Report confirms sexual abuse
Female interrogators repeatedly used sexually suggestive tactics to try to humiliate and pry information from devout Muslim men held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to a military investigation not yet public and newly declassified accounts from detainees. The prisoners have told their lawyers, who compiled the accounts, that female interrogators regularly violated Muslim taboos about sex and contact with women. The women rubbed their bodies against the men, wore skimpy clothes in front of them, made sexually explicit remarks and touched them provocatively, at least eight detainees said in documents or through their attorneys.
A wide-ranging Pentagon investigation, which has not yet been released, generally confirms the detainees' allegations, according to a senior Defense Department official familiar with the report. While isolated accounts of such tactics have emerged in recent weeks, the new allegations and the findings of the Pentagon investigation indicate that sexually oriented tactics may have been part of the fabric of Guantanamo interrogations, especially in 2003. The inquiry uncovered numerous instances in which female interrogators, using dye, pretended to spread menstrual blood on Muslim men, the official said.
Washington Post, 10/2/05
War adds to regional instability
As the insurgency continues in Iraq, the risk is that the country becomes a regional training ground for terrorists - as Afghanistan was in the 1990s - creating newly radicalized and experienced jihadis who return home to cause trouble in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and elsewhere.
In fact, there's evidence it's already happened in Kuwait. In the past month, the tiny Gulf state has been rocked by a series of shootouts with Muslim militants, some of whom learned their craft by working alongside Iraqi insurgents.
Christian Science Monitor, 8/2/05
Count delayed by complaints
Voters in Iraq went to the polls more than a week ago. But the final vote count has been delayed by numerous complaints from candidates and parties, accusing Iraqi officials of failing to hold fair elections. The most serious allegations have emerged from violence-plagued areas in the north of the country, where religious and ethnic tensions are simmering.
An exhausted-looking Iraqi electoral commission official told reporters on Monday that Iraqis would have to wait a few more days to get the final results of the country's elections. The commission has already acknowledged several major irregularities, concentrated in and around the volatile northern city of Mosul, which has a mix of Sunni Arab, Kurdish, Christian, and Turkmen populations.
Voice of America, 8/2/05
Sweetners for oil deals
The biggest prize? A possible $3 billion contract to build a new "super refinery" producing gasoline and other oil products from up to 1 million barrels per day of Iraq crude, said a senior U.S. Embassy official in Baghdad, declining to be named. An announcement could come by the end of the month; building a new refinery could take more than two years.
Companies such as Shell, Exxon and Chevron are offering all sorts of pot sweeteners to get on a refinery short list, the official said. Each one wants a "one-off" production-sharing agreement that will make it worthwhile to deal with the volatility in Iraq, including a still-changing government.
Instead, U.S. advisers are recommending that the government write a petroleum law to keep things open and transparent. "One-off" deals create conditions that encourage corruption, the official said. "If we go contract by contract, other companies will out-bribe the United States companies, and we will lose," the official said. "We want an fair, open, equal process, and U.S. companies have better technology."
UPI, 7/2/05
Resistance continues
Insurgents struck Iraq's security forces Monday with suicide bombs and mortar fire, killing more than 30 people as violence escalated after last week's election. Monday's deadliest attack occurred in Baqouba, where a suicide car bomber exploded his vehicle outside the gates of a provincial police headquarters, killing 15 people and wounding 17, police Col. Mudhahar al-Jubouri said. Many victims were looking for jobs as policemen, al-Jubouri said.
In Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad, a suicide bomber wandered into a crowd of security personnel at a hospital and blew himself up, killing 12 people and wounding seven, U.S. officials said. Insurgents shelled a police station in Mosul with more than a dozen mortar rounds Monday, killing three civilians, police said. And one Iraqi was killed and four others wounded when mortar shells exploded near the City Council building in Samarra, hospital officials said.
ABC News, 7/2/05
Most shootings get no publicity
The shootings rarely make news -- outside the towns where they occur. The military does not make a practice of publicizing cases of "collateral damage" unless by chance reporters are embedded with units and write about the events they witness. And no one at the Pentagon nor at the U.S. Central Command keeps a comprehensive tally of the incidents, according to senior officials in both locations. But, for example
From April to October a unit of Arkansas infantrymen was involved in at least eight shootings at roadblocks or in convoys that ended in civilian deaths, according to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. In one instance, the paper reported, a driver was killed and his pregnant wife wounded; in another a girl died after being struck by bits of metal from a shot intended to disable the car engine.
In mid-November, a family driving across battle-weary Fallujah encountered a company of Marines that opened fire, wounding a 23-year-old woman and killing her mother, media accounts reported.
In Baghdad the following month, a young man drove up to an Army base with his dead mother and two siblings, said Airborne Capt. James Shaw. Americans had shot up the car, the man said, and didn't even stop. Airborne officers from the 2nd Battalion, 325th Infantry, who were not responsible for this shooting, have been working to compensate the family.
None of these stories made the national press
New York Newsday, 7/2/05
Iraq creates mental health problems for UK troops
Almost 700 British servicemen and women have returned from Iraq with mental health problems including post-traumatic stress disorder. Between the beginning of the conflict in March 2003 and September 2004, 687 serving military personnel, predominantly soldiers, were treated.
Of these, 77 were diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and 382 with adjustment disorder or combat stress. A further 228 were treated for a range of problems such as depression, neurosis or misuse of medication. These figures are expected to rise when the Ministry of Defence releases data for the last three months of 2004.
Independent, 5/2/05
Rice kicks off tour with warning to Iran
Condoleezza Rice delivered an uncompromising warning yesterday to what she described as "the loathed" Iranian government at the start of her first foreign visit as new US secretary of state.
She said a military strike against Iran was not on the agenda "at this point in time" and there was still time for diplomacy to work. But she signalled there could be a dangerous showdown ahead if Iran pushed ahead with the development of a nuclear weapon.
Ms Rice, who replaces Colin Powell, refused to be drawn on whether regime change in Iran was now US policy. She has been much more hawkish about Tehran than her predecessor. Both the US and Israel would like to see the issue referred first to the UN security council with a view to imposing economic sanctions.
Ms Rice gave a list of what she regards as wrong with Iran, ranging from support for "terrorism" aimed at destabilising Palestinian-Israeli talks, to an "abysmal human rights record" and fake elections.
Guardian 5/2/05