These are the archives for the week ending 12th August 2005
Political turmoil in south...
Political crisis gripped the southern Iraqi town of Samawah today as the ousted regional governor refused to resign, the provincial council chief quit and another official said gunmen had threatened him. The uncertainty came in the wake of protests over public services that erupted on Sunday. Police fired into the crowd of hundreds, killing one person and wounding 40. A day later, regional council members voted to oust governor Mohammed al-Hassaani, head of al-Muthanna province, one of 18 Iraqi regions, after the protesters had demanded his resignation in the town.
Samawah, populated mainly by Shiite Muslims, has been largely free of guerrilla violence but like other towns is still suffering from power and water shortages more than two years after a US-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein. The unrest is worrying for the new Shiite-led government because southern Iraq, its main power base, is usually calm.
The Advertiser, Australia, 11/8/05
...and in Baghdad
Armed men entered Baghdad's municipal building during a blinding dust storm, deposed the city's mayor and installed a member of Iraq's most powerful Shiite militia. The deposed mayor, Alaa al-Tamimi, who was not in his offices at the time, recounted the events in a telephone conversation Tuesday and called the move a municipal coup d'état.
He added that he had gone into hiding for fear of his life. "This is the new Iraq," said Tamimi, a secular engineer with no party affiliation. "They use force to achieve their goal."
The group that ousted him insisted that it had the authority to assume control of Iraq's capital city and that Tamimi was in no danger. The man the group installed, Hussein al-Tahaan, is a member of the Badr Organization, the armed militia of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. The militia has been credited with keeping the peace in heavily Shiite areas in southern Iraq, but it also is accused of abuses like forcing women to wear the veils demanded by conservative Shiite religious law.
New York Times, 11/8/05
US accuses Iran on weapons
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has accused Tehran of smuggling weapons into Iraq, after US intelligence reports claimed a cache of bombs found in the country's north had come from Iran's Revolutionary Guard.
"It is true that weapons clearly, unambiguously, from Iran have been found in Iraq," Mr Rumsfeld said. "It's a problem for the Iraqi Government. It's a problem for the coalition forces. It's a problem for the international community. And ultimately, it's a problem for Iran."
The Australian, 11/8/05
27,000 in US Foreign legion
For Specialist James Garrovillas, enlisting in the Army meant more than just joining the military. It meant joining the United States. Specialist Garrovillas is among 20,000 military service members who have become American citizens since July 2002, many of whom applied under a fast-track process approved by President Bush in 2003 and enacted in October 2004. Under the new rules, people in the military can become citizens without paying the customary $320 application fee or having to be in the United States for an interview with immigration officials and naturalization proceedings.
The new citizenship laws have offered a powerful tool to recruiters at a time when the military is struggling to meet its monthly enlistment quotas. The armed forces now have at least 27,000 members who do not have United States citizenship.
New York Times, 9/8/05
Troop levels to rise
The United States expects to raise its troop levels in Iraq this fall to bolster security for the planned October constitutional referendum and December elections for a new government, the Pentagon said on Monday. The increase in troops also coincides with a spike in the number of Americans killed fighting the insurgency after a U.S.-led invasion toppled President Saddam Hussein in 2003. Since July 30, at least 41 U.S. troops have been killed in Iraq, including 18 on Aug. 3 alone.
The military previously announced it was augmenting the U.S. force in Afghanistan ahead of Sept. 18 parliamentary elections by sending an airborne battalion of 700 to 800 82nd Airborne Division paratroopers from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to join the 17,600 American troops already in the country.
Reuters, 8/8/05
US to 'steer' new Iraq
The United States' envoy in Iraq delivered a warning on Saturday to Shi'ite Islamist leaders, propelled to power by U.S. forces, not to use a new constitution to impose discriminatory laws by majority rule. A day after talks between Iraq's Shi'ite prime minister and its top Shi'ite ayatollah had revived fears among Sunnis and Kurds of an Iranian-style Islamic state, US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said Washington insisted a draft constitution due out this month must respect equal rights for women and minorities.
It was a clear public signal of U.S. determination to steer the new Iraq after months of behind-the-scenes negotiation.
Reuters, 6/8/05
Support for Bush lowest ever
US President George W. Bush took a political beating this weekend after a second opinion poll, taken after a spike in US casualties in Iraq, showed a sharp drop in public support for his Iraq policy. The survey by Newsweek magazine indicated only 34 percent of Americans approved of the way Bush was handling the situation in Iraq while 61 percent expressed their disapproval.
The findings, made public Saturday, represented the president's lowest rating on Iraq ever, which thus far has hovered above the 40-percent mark.
AFP, 8/8/05
Guerrilla struggle in western Iraq
With most of the fighting over after a large-scale invasion of the western Iraq town Friday, the troops in Haqlaniyah spent hours Sunday under a fiery sun looking for an adversary that often shoots and vanishes without a trace. Their frustration mirrors that of units in much of western Iraq, where homebred Sunni Muslim insurgents - some angry about the downfall of secular dictator Saddam Hussein, others seeking the dream of a Sunni theocracy - have joined with foreign fighters coming across a porous desert border looking for the glory of international jihad.
The guerrilla fighters often leave a rear guard to fight advancing U.S. forces, while moving the majority of their men on to other towns where the Marines have no presence and the police have fled or been disbanded.
Duluth News Tribune, 7/8/05
Afghan child mortality soars
Afghan women and children face an "acute emergency" because of exceptionally high maternal and child mortality rates, a representative of the U.N. children's agency said Thursday. About 20 percent of Afghan children die before their fifth birthday, said Cecilia Lotse, UNICEF's director for South Asia, and about 1,600 out of every 100,000 Afghan mothers die while giving birth or because of related complications.
While the country is progressing from a state of emergency to a focus on development, I think it's fair to say that the objective reality of women and children remains nothing but an acute emergency," she said at a news conference. Lotse said all children -- but particularly girls -- were "very vulnerable" in Afghanistan, with almost half the child population suffering from malnutrition.
School enrollment for young Afghan girls is among the lowest in the world. "This represents a tremendous waste of human potential and a tremendous unfulfilled promise," she said.
Los Angeles Times, 4/8/05
Sunnis murdered in British sector
Scores of assassinations have marred the relative peace and prosperity of Iraq's southern port of Basra, a city near the Iranian border that's dominated by Shiite Muslims and has been spared the extreme violence of Baghdad. The assassins have targeted mostly men who are thought to have been connected to Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, which was dominated by Sunni Muslims.
About 950 people have been killed since Saddam's regime was toppled in April 2003, according to Majid al Sari, the Defense Ministry adviser for the southern region. About half of the dead, al Sari said, are Sunnis, who make up about 30 percent of the city's population. As a result, many Sunni families are selling their homes and migrating to other provinces and countries.
Many of the killings are attributed to men in police patrol cars who kidnap and kill or commit drive-by shootings. Brigadier Chris Hughes, the British commander of the 12th Mechanized Brigade in Basra, confirmed the charges in an interview with Knight Ridder, saying there were "murderers" among the police. There have been some 80 killings since May, he said. "The chief of police is not directing that type of activity. Neither is he able to stop it," Hughes said. "Quite a lot of them come under the umbrella of unofficial de-Baathification."
Fort Wayne News-Sentinel, 3/8/05
CIA sponsored killers
The Central Intelligence Agency, US secret service, prepared the ground for invasion of Iraq by engaging in sabotage and killings to weaken the then president Saddam Hussein's regime, a media report said on Wednesday. According to the Washington Post, even before the Iraq war, the CIA recruited and trained an Iraqi paramilitary group code-named the Scorpions, to "foment rebellion, conduct sabotage and help CIA paramilitaries who entered Baghdad and other cities to target buildings and individuals."
Authorised by a presidential finding signed by President George W Bush in February or March 2002, the Scorpions were part of a policy of "regime change" in Iraq. After Baghdad fell, the CIA used the Scorpions to try to infiltrate the insurgency, to help out in interrogations, and, from time to time, to do "the dirty work," as one intelligence official put it.
Deccan Herald, India, 4/8/05
Tortured to death
Iraqi Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush was being stubborn with his American captors, and a series of intense beatings and creative interrogation tactics were not enough to break his will. On the morning of Nov. 26, 2003, a U.S. Army interrogator and a military guard grabbed a green sleeping bag, stuffed Mowhoush inside, wrapped him in an electrical cord, laid him on the floor and began to go to work. Again.
It was inside the sleeping bag that the 56-year-old detainee took his last breath through broken ribs, lying on the floor beneath a U.S. soldier in Interrogation Room 6 in the western Iraqi desert. Two days before, a secret CIA-sponsored group of Iraqi paramilitaries, working with Army interrogators, had beaten Mowhoush nearly senseless, using fists, a club and a rubber hose, according to classified documents.
The circumstances that led up to Mowhoush's death paint a vivid example of how the pressure to produce intelligence for anti-terrorism efforts and the war in Iraq led U.S. military interrogators to improvise and develop abusive measures, not just at Abu Ghraib but in detention centers elsewhere in Iraq, in Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Mowhoush's ordeal in Qaim, over 16 days in November 2003, also reflects U.S. government secrecy surrounding some abuse cases and gives a glimpse into a covert CIA unit that was set up to foment rebellion before the war and took part in some interrogations during the insurgency. Determining the details of the general's demise has been difficult because the circumstances are listed as "classified" on his official autopsy, court records have been censored to hide the CIA's involvement in his questioning, and reporters have been removed from a Fort Carson courtroom when testimony relating to the CIA has surfaced.
Washington Post, 3/8/05