These are the archives for the week ending 19th August 2005
Number of detainees doubles
The 82nd Airborne Division is sending about 700 soldiers to Iraq to provide extra security for detainees, whose numbers have doubled over the past year. The number of detainees in Iraq has grown from 5,400 in September 2004 to about 10,800 today.
Washington Post, 17/8/05
Iraqi asylum seekers detained
Scores of Iraqi failed asylum seekers are being detained around Britain in preparation for the first programme of forced removals, despite UN advice against such deportations.
Refugee groups said the move was "appalling and dangerous", with the volatile situation in Iraq meaning it is too soon to send people home. The Home Office said ministers do not accept that all parts of Iraq are affected by insurgent action and equally unsafe.
There are currently up to 7,000 failed Iraqi asylum seekers in Britain due to be deported, although some will have already gone home voluntarily.
A spokeswoman for the Home Office said "we believe that enforced returns are necessary to maintain the integrity of the asylum system".
Margaret Lally of the Refugee Council said "This goes against the advice of the UN, whose position is that it is too early to force people to return. The US state department has also advised that terrorists are targeting civilian flights, which shows just how dangerous these plans are".
Guardian 16/8/05
Violence continues in Afghanistan
Fighting across southern Afghanistan has left 28 suspected Taliban rebels dead as violence continues in the run-up to legislative elections next month.
Almost 1,000 people have been killed in violence since March.
Guardian 16/8/05
US troops take children hostage
US troops held five children as hostages to demand handover of insurgents near a northern Iraqi town on Tuesday, police said. "The US forces surrounded the village of Mazraa near Baiji and detained five children under 10 years old, calling on the residents by loudspeakers to hand over several other children showed on TV channels celebrating the killing of US soldiers after roadside blast last week," a police source from Baiji told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.
The US troops threatened to sweep the village by Wednesday morning to detain the other children and suspected insurgents, he said. The US military, however, said they had no information about the incident. Last week, four US soldiers were killed and six others wounded in a roadside bomb blast that hit their patrol near the northern oil refinery city of Baiji, some 200 km north of Baghdad.
Xinhua, China, 16/8/05
Real issues behind the constitution
Behind ramparts of concrete and barbed wire, the framers of Iraq's new constitution wrestled yesterday to prevent - or bring about - the federalisation of Iraq while their compatriots in the hot and fetid streets outside showed no interest in their efforts. Today is supposed to be "C" day, according to President Bush and all the others who illegally invaded this country in 2003.
However, in " real" Baghdad - where the President and Prime Minister and the constitutional committee never set foot - they ask you about security, about electricity, about water, about when the occupation will end, when the murders will end, when the rapes will end. They talk, quite easily, about the "failed" Jaafari government, so blithely elected by Shias and Kurds last January. "Failed" because it cannot protect its own people. "Failed" because it cannot rebuild its own capital city - visible to it between the Crusader-like machine-gun slits in the compound walls - and because it cannot understand, let alone meet, the demands of the "street".
Everyone knows the real issue behind the constitution: will it allow Iraq's three principle communities - the Shias, the Sunnis and the Kurds - to form their own federal states? And if so, will this mean the break up of Iraq? The Sunnis, the only one of the three whose homes do not sit on oil reserves, are naturally against such a division which would, incidentally, allow the Americans and the other Western nations, who still claim to have liberated Iraq for "democracy", to reach oil deals with two weakened entities rather than a potentially united Iraqi nation.
Independent, 15/8/05
Constitution leaves privatisation agenda untouched
On Monday, Iraq's National Assembly will release a draft constitution to be voted on by the people in two months. Since February, vital issues have been debated and discussed by the drafting committee: the role of Islamic law, the rights of women, the autonomy of the Kurds and the participation of the minority Sunnis.
But what hasn't been on the table is at least as important to the formation of a new Iraq: the country's economic structure. The Bush administration has succeeded in maintaining a stranglehold on issues such as public versus private ownership of resources, foreign access to Iraqi oil and U.S. control of the reconstruction effort - all of which are still governed by administration policies put into place immediately after the invasion.
Over a year ago, orders were put in place by L. Paul Bremer III, then the U.S. administrator of Iraq, that were designed to "transition [Iraq] from a … centrally planned economy to a market economy". Those orders were also incorporated into the transitional administrative law — Iraq's interim constitution — and the economic restructuring they mandate is well underway. Laws governing banking, investment, patents, copyrights, business ownership, taxes, the media and trade were all changed according to U.S. goals, with little real participation from the Iraqi people. The constitutional drafting committee has, in turn, left each of these laws in place.
Los Angeles Times, 14/8/05
US lowers sights on what can be acheived
The Bush administration is significantly lowering expectations of what can be achieved in Iraq, recognizing that the United States will have to settle for far less progress than originally envisioned during the transition due to end in four months, according to U.S. officials in Washington and Baghdad. The United States no longer expects to see a model new democracy, a self-supporting oil industry or a society in which the majority of people are free from serious security or economic challenges, U.S. officials say.
In the race to meet a sequence of fall deadlines, the process of forging national unity behind the constitution is largely being scrapped, current and former officials involved in the transition said. "We are definitely cutting corners and lowering our ambitions in democracy building," said Larry Diamond, a Stanford University democracy expert who worked with the U.S. occupation government .
On security, the administration originally expected the U.S.-led coalition to be welcomed with rice and rosewater, traditional Arab greetings, with only a limited reaction from loyalists of ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. The surprising scope of the insurgency and influx of foreign fighters has forced Washington to repeatedly lower expectations -- about the time-frame for quelling the insurgency and creating an effective and cohesive Iraqi force capable of stepping in, U.S. officials said. Killings of members of the Iraqi security force have tripled since January. Iraq's ministry of health estimates that bombings and other attacks have killed 4,000 civilians in Baghdad since Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari's interim government took office April 28. Last week was the fourth-worst week of the whole war for U.S. military deaths in combat, and August already is the worst month for deaths of members of the National Guard and Reserve.
Washington now does not expect to fully defeat the insurgency before departing, but instead to diminish it, officials and analysts said. There is also growing talk of turning over security responsibilities to the Iraqi forces even if they are not fully up to original U.S. expectations, in part because they have local legitimacy that U.S. troops often do not. "We've said we won't leave a day before it's necessary. But necessary is the key word -- necessary for them or for us? When we finally depart, it will probably be for us," a U.S. official said.
Water is also a "tough, tough" situation in a desert country, said a U.S. official in Baghdad familiar with reconstruction issues. Pumping stations depend on electricity, and engineers now say the system has hundreds of thousands of leaks. "The most thoroughly dashed expectation was the ability to build a robust self-sustaining economy. We're nowhere near that. State industries, electricity are all below what they were before we got there," said Wayne White, former head of the State Department's Iraq intelligence team.
Washington Post, 14/8/05
Indiscriminate fire kills civilians
An attack on a U.S. military patrol followed by heavy U.S. gunfire left 15 Iraqis dead and 17 wounded in a town west of Baghdad, residents said on Saturday. Residents of Nasaf, a town just outside Ramadi, west of Baghdad, said a roadside bomb exploded next to a U.S. armoured patrol as it passed near the Ibn al-Jawzi mosque shortly after prayers on Friday. Following the explosion, U.S. troops opened fire, the residents said, shooting towards those emerging from the mosque.
Munem Aftan, the director of Ramadi General Hospital, said 15 people were killed, including eight children, and 17 wounded. The U.S. military denied troops had opened fire indiscriminately. Iraqi civilians frequently complain that U.S. troops open fire indiscriminately after they are attacked. Human rights groups have documented scores of cases in which civilians have been shot and killed after approaching U.S. military roadblocks too quickly, or not following instructions to keep away from U.S. military convoys as they pass.
Reuters, 13/8/05
'Quick strike' kills civilians
US forces ended a major military operation in the western restive Anbar province, while local residents said all they got is agony. Local residents said Haditha and neighboring cities suffered a humanitarian crisis due to the military operation.
"What is happening in Haqlaniyam, Browana and Haditha is a disaster. Bodies are in the streets or buried under the rubble for days, but US forces do not allow people to move and claim the bodies. This totally ran counter to basic human rights," 33 year- old Flah Ahmed told Xinhua. "I still can not believe that I could take my family out of the city. It was a big risk as some people were killed when trying to leave the city, but we had no other choice because there was no electricity or water in the past seven days. The air raids do not distinguish civilians and armed groups,"
Ahmed Al-Haditha said. "Old people, children and women were killed. What is the United Nations doing? What are human right organizations doing? What is the Iraqi Ministry for Human Rights doing?" he said. In the city of Haditha alone, civilian casualties reached 35, most of them women and children, some residents said. Local residents also doubted if there are any real foreign fighters in the areas.
Xinhua, China, 12/8/05
Attacks on convoys double
The commander of U.S. transportation and other logistics forces in Iraq said Friday that the number of roadside bomb strikes against his troops throughout Iraq has doubled in the past year.
Army Brig. Gen. Yves J. Fontaine, commander of the 1st Corps Support Command, said the number of insurgent attacks along supply routes has grown to about 30 per week, although the U.S. casualty rate has declined because extra protective armor has been installed on supply trucks and other vehicles in the transportation fleet.
CBC News, 12/8/05
Iraqis demonstrate for basics
Iraq's leaders were racing to complete a draft constitution last night just two days before the deadline - but the political drama bypassed most Iraqis, who were concentrating on the daily quest for electricity, clean water, jobs and security.
While politicians - tracked hour by hour in Washington - wrestled with momentous issues such as federalism and the role of Islam, demonstrators in Baghdad demanded improvements in basic services that have crumbled since Saddam Hussein's fall in 2003.
Many districts have less than six hours of electricity a day, compared with about 20 hours under the old regime. Families without generators have trouble sleeping in temperatures which can exceed 50C. The blackouts disrupt water pumps and leave pools of sewage in the slums of Sadr City, eastern Baghdad, as well as upmarket areas.
US funded public works programmes have sprouted in Sadr City but the mood remains sour.
Yesterday's demonstration was called by Moqtada al-Sadr, a cleric who taps into resentment felt by the poor.
Guardian 13/8/05
US playing central role in constitutional process....
With three days remaining before the deadline for Iraqi politicians to complete their draft of a permanent constitution, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad has taken a leading role in negotiations among rival factions, Iraqi lawmakers said Friday. For at least two days, Khalilzad has huddled in the capital's fortified Green Zone with Kurdish, Sunni Arab and Shiite Arab blocs from the committee writing the document. He presented a written, U.S.-backed approach to unresolved questions such as the role of Islam in determining law and the degree of autonomy to grant regional governments, several committee members said.
"The Americans say they don't intervene, but they have intervened deep," said Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish member of the constitution committee who said he met with U.S. officials Thursday and Friday. "They gave us a detailed proposal, almost a full version of a constitution."
Washington Post, 13/8/05
...but Britain opts for a quiet exit
When British troops eventually pull out from southern Iraq, they will leave behind the Islamic Republic of Basra: a mini-state which is more solidly Islamicist than any other part of the country. After a controversial war and two years of painful nation-building, that is an ugly result.
For two years, Britain has been quietly content to take some credit for Basra's serenity compared with the cauldron of Baghdad and the centre. Much has been written about British troops' skill in dealing with locals and the valuable experience of Northern Ireland. But military commanders are the first to say they have not been decisive. The south has been peaceful because its Shia population and its leaders have chosen that it should be so. They knew that if the US brought in democracy, then the Shia majority, suppressed by Saddam Hussein, would be in power.
The effects are very visible. Basra used to be a byword for tolerance. But across the south, women are now generally veiled and cloaked. Alcohol sellers have shut down. Pictures of clerics are everywhere. Steven Vincent, a US journalist kidnapped and shot dead recently in Basra, had criticised British officials, saying they "stand above the growing turmoil", refusing to challenge the Islamists' claim on the hearts and minds of police officers.
At this point, it is fair for British officials to say they have almost no influence left - and that the real battles for the soul of Iraq are in Baghdad, over the constitution. But the air of detachment suggests that the priority is to keep the south peaceful while waiting for the signal to move towards the exits.
The Times, 11/8/05
Bush: troop reduction is 'speculation'
Faced with mounting casualties and signs of diminished support for the war, President George W. Bush said that while the United States was making progress in Iraq, it was too soon to say when the number of American troops could be scaled back. Speaking in unusually personal terms, forced on him in part by the defiant presence outside his ranch of the mother of an American soldier killed last year in Baghdad, Bush said he had considered and rejected calls by some antiwar protesters for an immediate withdrawal.
He also signaled that, despite planning by senior Pentagon officials for a potential troop reduction as early as next spring, he was not certain Iraqis could handle their own security well enough for the United States to begin leaving anytime soon. Bush dismissed talk among some Pentagon officials of a phased troop reduction as "speculation based upon progress that some are seeing in Iraq as to whether or not the Iraqis will be able to take the fight to the enemy." He said no decisions had been made about either cutting U.S. forces or adding more to safeguard Iraqi elections.
International Herald Tribune, 13/8/05
Thousands die in shootings
July was a record month at Baghdad's main morgue, where the bodies pile up so fast they often have to be buried before they can be identified to make way for the next day's arrivals. A total of 1,100 corpses were received in July, a sharp increase from the previous record of 879 in June, and far exceeding the morgue's 10-a-day capacity, according to its overworked director, Faed Bakr. At the morgue last month, more than 60 percent of the deaths - 676, or more than 20 a day - came from shootings, in yet another indicator that overall violence in what already is the world's most violent capital keeps getting worse, even as the U.S. military and the Iraqi government insist that the insurgency is being tamed.
"When you have this number of killings every day, when you have 676 people die from shooting in a month, you're talking about mass killing," Bakr said. "It's not civil war, but it's instability, and it's out of control."
It is impossible to attribute all the killings to the insurgency. The statistics include common murders, as well as civilians killed by Iraqi security forces and American troops. But the rise in shootings also coincides with surging reports of assassinations, drive-by shootings and unexplained killings. Many victims handled by the morgue were badly mutilated before they were killed, and almost all of them have been men, Bakr said. The figures point to the only clearly discernible trend to the violence in Iraq's capital, which is that it keeps getting worse. The patterns shift, the methods evolve, the tactics adjust and the nature of the killings changes month to month, but there has been no letup in the dying.
Chicago Tribune, 11/8/05
Subsidies stay, but privatisation continues
A proposal by Iraq's finance minister to reduce the fuel and food subsidies that consume roughly a third of the government's budget and largely crush economic growth has been rejected by the cabinet after a recent similar move in Yemen set off fatal riots there. The subsidies, which artificially produce some of the lowest gasoline and heating fuel prices in the world and finance free basic foodstuffs, have been singled out by financial institutions both inside and outside Iraq as a crippling burden when the country is trying to create a free-market economy as it grapples with insurgent violence and sabotage of its oil and electricity infrastructure.
Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum, the oil minister, said that he had been among the leaders of a group that blocked the proposal, and that he had raised the specter of the riots in Yemen, in which dozens of people died, after the government ended fuel subsidies there. Mr. Uloum said that while he supported the idea in principle, it could safely be put in place only after a public education campaign, preferably after the next national elections.
Ministers said the cabinet did approve a measure that would, for the first time, allow private industry to enter what is now an entirely state-run oil-export business. "This is the point," Mr. Uloum said. "We got something new."
New York Times, 11/8/05
Billion dollar fraud on arms
Iraqi investigators have uncovered widespread fraud and waste in more than $1 billion worth of weapons deals arranged by middlemen who reneged or took huge kickbacks on contracts to arm Iraq's fledgling military, according to a confidential report and interviews with U.S. and Iraqi officials.
The Iraqi Board of Supreme Audit describes transactions suggesting that senior U.S.-appointed Iraqi officials in the Defense Ministry used three intermediary companies to hide the kickbacks they received from contracts involving unnecessary, overpriced or outdated equipment.
San Jose Mercury News, 11/8/05