These are the archives for the week ending 22nd April 2005
1,000 Iraqis a month dying
Despite a decrease in American deaths in Iraq, Iraqis continue to die and suffer under poor economic conditions, a foreign policy expert said today. Between 500 and 1,000 Iraqis would be killed each month in the war-torn country, the Washington-based The Brookings Institution foreign policy expert Michael O'Hanlon said.
"In the security arena, we've seen a great improvement in the rate of casualties taken by American forces - a much lower rate of fatalities and wounded; probably a 50 to 70 per cent reduction relative to the late fall," he said. "Unfortunately, those improvements have not yet affected the overall security landscape in Iraq for most Iraqis."
Daily Telegraph, 22/4/05
Airport road insecure
On Thursday, a roadside bomb hit a convoy carrying foreign security contractors on the road to Baghdad's airport, killing two people. Three foreign contractors -- an American, an Australian and a Canadian -- were killed on the same stretch of road on Wednesday, their employer confirmed on Thursday. And two U.S. soldiers were killed in the same vicinity the day before.
The inability to secure the airport road, an essential link for military and civilian supplies, has come to symbolize the difficulty U.S. forces face in tackling the insurgency.
Reuters, 21/4/05
Political wrangling continues
Violence threatens to eclipse efforts by elected leaders to form a government, amid growing tensions between Iraq's majority Shi'ite and once-dominant Sunni Muslim communities. Hopes that a government would be announced on Thursday were dashed late on Wednesday when last-minute disagreements emerged between Shi'ites, who won the Jan. 30 election, and other factions, including interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's.
Disputes surfaced when Allawi rejected an offer to join the cabinet, sources involved in the negotiations said. "The talks were going well, but the Shi'ites offered Allawi just two ministries, not the four that he wants, and he rejected the offer," one source said, referring to ministries offered to Allawi's political grouping.
Reuters, 21/4/05
Resistance 'has not gone away'
For a while after Iraq's election in January, it looked as if the country's nearly two-year-old insurgency was showing signs of flagging. Attacks against U.S. forces fell more than 20 percent in the weeks immediately after the poll, and March's U.S. death toll was the lowest in more than a year, the U.S. military said. While Iraqi security forces were still dying every day, with more than 400 police and soldiers killed over the past two months, positive signs were appearing.
But over the past two weeks, much of that optimism has been wiped away as insurgents have hit back with a series of deadly attacks targeting both U.S. forces and their Iraqi allies. "I don't think the insurgency has gone away at all," said a U.S. military official in Baghdad, who asked not to be named. "Perhaps we just had a spike in success against it."
Reuters, 20/4/05
US drops anti-terrorism report
The State Department announced yesterday that it will no longer publish annual statistics for international terrorism, a year after it was forced to withdraw its study and correct its assertion that terrorist acts had declined in 2003 when in fact they were at their highest level in years.
For years, the State Department document "Patterns of Global Terrorism" had served as the definitive government accounting of international terrorist acts.But last year it had to withdraw the report in which it cited "great progress" in combating terrorism and asserted that the number of terrorist acts had dropped to its lowest level in three decades.
After outside reviews showed the data were flawed, Colin Powell ordered the report redone. A second version said that more than twice as many civilians had been killed or injured in terrorist attacks as the initial report showed.
Washington Post, 19/4/05
Human rights crisis in Afghanistan
Afghanistan's perilous human rights situation demands ongoing monitoring by the United Nations, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch urged the U.N. Commission for Human Rights, now conducting its annual meeting in Geneva, to keep Afghanistan on its agenda and to increase the number of human rights monitors in the country.
"There is still a human rights crisis in Afghanistan," said Brad Adams, Asia director of Human Rights Watch. "Warlords and armed factions still dominate many parts of the country and routinely abuse human rights, especially the rights of women and girls."
Reuters, 19/4/05
"To hell with you, we are Americans"
As politicians debated renewed violence, an Iraqi lawmaker accused a US soldier of grabbing him by the throat and shoving him to the ground after he parked his car in Baghdad's Green Zone. Fattah al-Sheikh, an independent politician, said he had parked his car ahead of a session of parliament when US troops approached him and told him he didn't have the right permit.
"I don't speak English and so I said to the Iraqi translator with them, 'Tell them that I am a member of parliament', and he replied, 'To hell with you, we are Americans,'" Sheikh told parliament.
"What happened to me represents an insult to the whole National Assembly that was elected by the Iraqi people. This shows that the democracy we are enjoying is fake," he said. "Through such incidents, the U.S. Army tries to show that it is the real controlling power in the country, not the new Iraqi government, and that it can impose its rules on every Iraqi."
Daily Times, Pakistan, 20/4/05 and San Francisco Chronicle, 19/4/05
'Wish lists' of torture techniques
Army intelligence officials in Iraq developed and circulated "wish lists" of harsh interrogation techniques they hoped to use on detainees in August 2003, including tactics such as low-voltage electrocution, blows with phone books and using dogs and snakes -- suggestions that some soldiers believed spawned abuse and illegal interrogations.
Capt. William Ponce wrote that "the gloves are coming off" because casualties were mounting and officers needed better intelligence to fight the insurgency. Ponce solicited "wish lists" from interrogators and gave them three days to respond. That message was forwarded throughout the theater, including to officials at Abu Ghraib, where notorious abuse followed.
Washington Post, 19/4/05
Murder, torture and rape by police
In the last half of 2004 Iraqi police have killed political opponents, falsely arrested people to extort money, and systematically raped and tortured female prisoners, according to a February, 2005, State Dept. report on Iraq's human rights record. In one of the worst examples, police in Basra reported last December that officers in the Internal Affairs Unit were involved in the slaughter of 10 Baath Party members.
Iraq's Human Rights Minister, Bakhtiar Amin, says it will be hard to teach democratic policing because torture and other human rights abuses were "learned behavior
Business Week Online, 18/4/05
Tensions rise in Kosovo
An explosion late on Sunday local time in the Kosovo capital Pristina injured three people and damaged the offices of an opposition political party, police and witnesses said. The explosion is the latest in a series of violent incidents to hit the U.N.-run province in recent months. They include a roadside bomb blast in March targeting President Ibrahim Rugova. He escaped unhurt.
Kosovo is gearing up for negotiations later this year on whether it becomes independent -- as the 90 per cent Albanian majority demands -- or remains formally part of Serbia. The United Nations, which has run the province of 2 million people since the 1998-99 guerrilla war, says extremists could try to destabilise Kosovo as the talks near.
New Zealand Herald, 18/4/05
Hostage drama was political spin
Three Iraqi Army battalions surrounded the town of Madaen, just south of the capital, where Sunni kidnappers were said to be threatening to kill hundreds of Shiite hostages unless all Shiites left the town. But as the army battalions arrived in Madaen, they saw streets full of people calmly sipping tea in cafés and going about their business. There were no armed Sunni mobs, no cowering Shiite victims.
After hours of careful searches, the soldiers assisted by air surveillance found no evidence of any kidnappings or refugees at all. By this afternoon, Iraqi army officials were reporting that the crisis in Madaen, which had been narrated in a stream of breathless television reports and news agency stories, was nothing but a tissue of rumors and politically motivated accusations.
In the end, the Iraqi army officers who searched Madaen delivered their own, more balanced verdict. "This issue was exaggerated for political reasons related to the formation of the new government," said Maj. Gen. Mudhir Mola Abboud of the Iraqi army. "We entered the city and did not find any hostages."
New York Times, 17/4/05
Political manoeuvres
National politicians appear to be exploiting a "crisis" that never was for their own ends. Much of the weekend's information about Madain came from the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq, an orthodox Shia party with historic links to Iran. It won the highest percentage of votes in the January election and is invovled in a power struggle with Iyad Allawi, the interim prime minister and a secularist. By portraying Mr Allawi as failing to control the security situation, it may have hoped to undermine him. Mr Allawi, in turn, did not want to appear weak at a time when a new cabinet is to be announced.
Daily Telegraph, 19/4/05
Talabani calls for use of militias
Iraq's new president has said the insurgency could be ended immediately if the authorities made use of Kurdish, Shia Muslim and other militias. Jalal Talabani said this would be more effective than waiting for Iraqi forces to take over from the US-led coalition.
BBC, 18/4/05
Resistance continues but with little publicity
The upsurge in violence across Iraq in the past four days has left claims made by the Pentagon that the tide is turning in Iraq and there are hopeful signs of a return to normality in tatters. At least 17 Iraqis were killed during the day and two US soldiers were reported dead after a series of attacks.
Ironically, one reason why Washington can persuade the outside world that its venture in Iraq is finally coming right is that it is too dangerous for reporters to travel outside Baghdad or stray far from their hotels in the capital.
Independent, 17/4/05
Korean tension
US troops stationed in South Korea were forced earlier this year to scrap a contingency plan for the possible collapse of Kim Jong Il's regime in North Korea because of objections by Seoul, the South Korean government said Friday. South Korean officials apparently feared that the United States wanted to take command in case of a power vacuum and would send its troops hastily marching toward Pyongyang, perhaps under the flag of the same U.N. command that waged the 1950-1953 Korean War.
As South Korea has developed into the world's 12th largest economy, its government bristles at the idea that the United States would take the lead in another war on the Korean peninsula. Disagreements about the command structure have been a long-running source of tension in the U.S. and Korean military alliance.
Los Angeles Times, 15/4/05
More prison riots
Detainees at Camp Bucca, the largest US-run prison in Iraq, have rioted for the second time in less than two weeks as insurgents escalated their attacks in Baghdad, killing one person and wounding eight.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan meanwhile said the US and Britain may have turned a blind eye to improper dealings in the controversial oil-for-food program under the embargo imposed on Saddam Hussein's ousted regime.
Daily Telegraph, 15/4/05
Turks and kurds clash
Turkish troops backed by helicopters killed 21 Kurdish rebels near the Iraqi border overnight in the biggest clash since the rebels declared a unilateral truce more than five years ago, officials said Thursday. The Turkish military has intensified anti-rebel operations following intelligence reports that hundreds of rebels have infiltrated Turkey from Iraq, a local military official said on condition of anonymity.
Chicago Tribune, 15/4/05
US deaths still one a day
Since the U.S. invasion in 2003, at least 1,546 troops have died in Iraq, including at least 1,176 who died as a result of hostile action, according to the Defense Department. The figures include four military civilians. Those numbers have dropped since national elections at the end of January, but deaths are still being reported at an average of about one a day.
Philadelphia Enquirer, 14/4/05
New wave of attacks
Insurgents carried out a string of suicide attacks and armed assaults in central and northern Iraq Thursday, leaving at least 19 Iraqis dead and scores wounded in the second day of renewed bloodshed. The range of the recent violence has echoed the darker days of the insurgency last year and made it clear that the extraordinary challenges facing the newly elected government - which could assume power as soon as Sunday - have not subsided.
International Herald Tribune, 15/4/05
British businessman in oil corruption charge
A BRITISH oil trader was accused yesterday of paying millions of dollars in secret bribes to Saddam Hussein's regime as US prosecutors made new disclosures about alleged corruption by high-ranking UN officials in the Oil-for-Food scandal.
"By participating in this surcharge scheme and bypassing the Oil-for-Food programme, David Chalmers Jr, John Irving and Ludmil Dionissiev, and the Bayoil companies diverted funds from the Oil-for-Food bank account that otherwise would have been available to purchase humanitarian goods under the Oil-for-Food programme," the indictment said.
Times, 15/4/05