Category Archives: war in Iraq

Murder, torture, sexual orientation and gender in Iraq

Murder, torture, sexual orientation and gender in Iraq

Iraqi militias are carrying out a spreading campaign of torture and murder against men suspected of homosexual conduct, or of not being “manly” enough, and Iraq authorities have done nothing to stop the killing, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Human Rights Watch called on Iraq’s government to act urgently to rein in militia abuses, punish the perpetrators, and stop a new resurgence of violence that threatens all Iraqis’ safety.

The 67-page report, “‘They Want Us Exterminated’: Murder, Torture, Sexual Orientation and Gender in Iraq,” documents a wide-reaching campaign of extrajudicial executions, kidnappings, and torture of gay men that began in early 2009. The killings began in the vast Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City, a stronghold of Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia, and spread to many cities across Iraq. Mahdi Army spokesmen have promoted fears about the “third sex” and the “feminization” of Iraq men, and suggested that militia action was the remedy. Some people told Human Rights Watch that Iraqi security forces have colluded and joined in the killing. [continued…]

Iraq may hold vote on U.S. withdrawal

US troops could be forced by Iraqi voters to withdraw a year ahead of schedule under a referendum the Iraqi government backed Monday, creating a potential complication for American commanders concerned about rising violence in the country’s north.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s move appeared to disregard the wishes of the U.S. government, which has quietly lobbied against the plebiscite. American officials fear it could lead to the annulment of an agreement allowing U.S. troops to stay until the end of 2011, and instead force them out by the start of that year.

The Maliki government’s announcement came on the day that the top U.S. general in Iraq proposed a plan to deploy troops to disputed areas in the restive north, a clear indication that the military sees a continuing need for U.S. forces even if Iraqis no longer want them here. [continued…]

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Idle Iraqi date farms show decline of economy

Idle Iraqi date farms show decline of economy

Late July and early August is date harvesting season in Iraq, when within the span of a few weeks the desert sun turns hard green spheres into tender, golden brown fruit prized for its sweetness.

But here in Iraq, one of the places where agriculture was developed more than 7,000 years ago, there are increasing doubts about whether it makes much sense to grow dates — or much of anything for that matter.

As recently as the 1980s, Iraq was self-sufficient in producing wheat, rice, fruits, vegetables, and sheep and poultry products. Its industrial sector exported textiles and leather goods, including purses and shoes, as well as steel and cement. But wars, sanctions, poor management, international competition and disinvestment have left each industry a shadow of its former self.

Slowly, Iraq’s economy has become based almost entirely on imports and a single commodity. [continued…]

The sheikh down

It’s a bright day in February, and I am in a pink villa on the outskirts of Fallujah, sitting with a tribal sheikh and a Marine commander as they hunch over a plate of truffles. The sheikh is Eifan Saddun al-Isawi, a charming 33-year-old Iraqi in a red-checkered kaffiyeh, a brown dishdasha, and DKNY wraparound sunglasses who uses phrases like “sons of bitches” when he talks about Al Qaeda with Americans. He is the head of Fallujah’s Sahwa, or Awakening, council, the Sunni militia hired by the United States in early 2007 to fight its enemies in Iraq, and he’s become one of the American military’s go-to guys in the city, as evidenced by the photos on his walls of him with George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

The American officer, Lt. Colonel Chris Hastings, apologizes for forgetting to bring Eifan “magazines with pictures of pretty ladies” and congratulates him for winning a seat in the provincial elections. He proceeds to tell Eifan to make sure that a certain someone the Marines are “concerned” about doesn’t make it into local politics. Eifan assures him he’ll see to it.

Hastings also needs Eifan on the hearts-and-minds front: The Marines recently killed a teacher strapped with a suicide belt, and Hastings wants the sheikh to convince his community that the Americans aren’t bloodthirsty warmongers. The Awakening councils don’t officially work for the Americans anymore—the Iraqi government now pays the $300-a-month salaries of Eifan’s men—but Eifan obliges immediately. “Give me pictures and I will give it to all the imams and sheikhs to show them he was wearing a belt,” he says. He then presses the lieutenant colonel to release some of his friends from prison (Hastings agrees), offers him an antique hunting rifle (Hastings declines), and steers the talk back to the topic he’s been hinting at throughout the meeting: American cash.

“Just tell the colonel to give me the contract. Come on, man. You know I’ll do a good job,” he says. Over the years, Eifan’s gotten used to the way Americans do business in Iraq. Working with them has made him a millionaire. [continued…]

Minorities trapped in northern Iraq’s maelstrom

Kamal Ahmed woke up before the crack of dawn and went to the village mosque where he serves as the muezzin.

After calling the people to prayer, he went back to sleep on the roof of his house in a metal post bed covered with a mosquito net, a common practice in Iraq during the sweltering summer months. Minutes later, a huge explosion brought down half of the two-floor house. His side of the house remained miraculously intact, but three members of his family, who were asleep inside, were crushed to death.

Two explosions, which obliterated a large swath of this village of nearly 10,000 people near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Monday, killed 34 people and wounded almost 200. The village is inhabited by Shiite Shabaks, a Kurdish-speaking minority. [continued…]

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Sometimes it’s not your war, but you sacrifice anyway

Sometimes it’s not your war, but you sacrifice anyway

To outsource the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States has turned to the cheapest labor possible. About two-thirds of the 200,000 civilians working under federal contracts in the war zones are foreigners. Many come from poor, Third World countries. Others are local hires.

These low-paid foreign workers face many of the same risks soldiers do. Mortars have killed Filipinos who served meals in mess halls. Assassins have targeted Iraqis translating for soldiers. Roadside bombs have ripped into trucks driven by Turkish nationals. These workers have been wounded like soldiers. They have died like soldiers.

The United States has a system to provide care for such civilian casualties. Developed in the 1940s, it is an obscure type of workers’ compensation insurance, funded by taxpayers and overseen by the Labor Department. Mandated by a law called the Defense Base Act, the system requires almost every federal contractor working abroad to purchase insurance to cover injuries arising from work or war, for all employees, American or foreign.

American civilian workers have had trouble enough getting payment for their injuries. AIG, the primary provider of such insurance, has battled them over everything from prosthetic legs to treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder, according to court records and interviews. But at least the Americans have a fighting chance.

For foreign workers, the system has not even come close to delivering on its promises. In Nepal, I spoke with a family in a remote valley of tumbling rivers and jewel-green rice fields. After neighbors heard news reports over the radio, the family watched an Internet video that showed that their son had been executed in a dusty ditch in western Iraq on his way to work at a base for U.S. soldiers. Neither the company nor the United States had made any effort to contact them. The elderly couple, who had relied upon their son’s salary, wondered how they would survive. [continued…]

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A window into CIA’s embrace of secret jails

A window into CIA’s embrace of secret jails

In March 2003, two C.I.A. officials surprised Kyle D. Foggo, then the chief of the agency’s main European supply base, with an unusual request. They wanted his help building secret prisons to hold some of the world’s most threatening terrorists.

Mr. Foggo, nicknamed Dusty, was known inside the agency as a cigar-waving, bourbon-drinking operator, someone who could get a cargo plane flying anywhere in the world or quickly obtain weapons, food, money — whatever the C.I.A. needed. His unit in Frankfurt, Germany, was strained by the spy agency’s operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, but Mr. Foggo agreed to the assignment.

“It was too sensitive to be handled by headquarters,” he said in an interview. “I was proud to help my nation.”

With that, Mr. Foggo went on to oversee construction of three detention centers, each built to house about a half-dozen detainees, according to former intelligence officials and others briefed on the matter. One jail was a renovated building on a busy street in Bucharest, Romania, the officials disclosed. Another was a steel-beam structure at a remote site in Morocco that was apparently never used. The third, another remodeling project, was outside another former Eastern bloc city. They were designed to appear identical, so prisoners would be disoriented and not know where they were if they were shuttled back and forth. They were kept in isolated cells. [continued…]

Interrogator: ‘intolerance’ led to torture

Former Air Force Maj. Matthew Alexander, whose questioning of a captured terrorist led to the elimination al Qaeda’s top man in Iraq, said a pervasive “intolerance” of Arabs and Muslims among American interrogators led to abuses at Abu Ghraib and other prisons.

“Soldiers referred to them as rag heads and so on,” Alexander said during a Monday talk at the International Spy Museum, in Washington, D.C. to promote his book, “How To Break a Terrorist: The U.S. Interrogators Who Used Brains, Not Brutality, to Take Down the Deadliest Man in Iraq.”

“They had read things like ‘The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam,’ which characterizes its practitioners as potential terrorists, he added.

An Air Force criminal investigator for over a decade before being assigned to Iraq in March 2006, Alexander was careful not to characterize all, or even most, interrogators as bigots, although he said, “it was not just a few bad apples” who tortured prisoners.

“It was not a majority of interrogators. If I had to guess, maybe 20 per cent,” he told a packed room at the International Spy Museum, which opened its doors in July 2002.

“A small minority with a lot of power” at the top of the chain of command was responsible for fostering at atmosphere in which abuses could flourish, he said. [continued…]

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Iraq attacks raise fears of renewed ethnic tensions

Iraq attacks raise fears of renewed ethnic tensions

A string of bombings in northern Iraq and Baghdad that has killed at least 112 people in the last several days, including 60 on Monday, has raised fears that insurgent groups are embarking on a sustained attempt to kindle ethnic and sectarian warfare.

The toll since Friday represents the worst surge of violence since U.S. troops handed over security in urban areas to Iraqi security forces on June 30.

The attacks serve as a reminder that although the U.S. military says it is on track to complete the withdrawal of U.S. combat forces from Iraq by next August, the potential for fresh conflict between Arabs and Kurds in the north, and Sunnis and Shiites elsewhere, remains very real. [continued…]

Sectarian bombings pulverize a village in Iraq

The entire village was gone. Local television broadcast scenes of homes reduced to heaps of rubble mixed with bed frames, mattresses, furniture and bloodstained pillows. A villager cried into the camera, “Look, Mr. Prime Minister and Mr. Interior Minister, where is the security that you speak about?”

The latest wave of sectarian bombings struck northern Iraq and Baghdad on Monday, killing at least 50 people, wounding hundreds more and leveling the village, near Mosul.

Nearly 100 people in Baghdad and the northern city of Mosul have been killed in attacks since Friday, raising grave concerns about the Iraqi government’s ability to maintain security. [continued…]

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Kurdish faultline threatens to spark new war

Kurdish faultline threatens to spark new war

It is called the “trigger line”, a 300-mile long swathe of disputed territory in northern Iraq where Arab and Kurdish soldiers confront each other, and which risks turning into a battlefield. As the world has focused on the US troop withdrawal from Iraq, and the intensifying war in Afghanistan, Arabs and Kurds in Iraq have been getting closer to an all out war over control of the oil-rich lands stretching from the borders of Syria in the west to Iran in the east.

The risk of armed conflict is acute because the zone in dispute is a mosaic of well-armed communities backed by regular forces. Kurdish and Arab soldiers here watch each other’s movements with deepest suspicion in case the other side might attempt to establish new facts on the ground. It is to avert a new armed conflict breaking out between the powerful military forces on both sides that Iraq’s Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, travelled to Kurdistan for crisis talks last week with Kurdish leaders, Iraq’s (Kurdish) President, Jalal Talabani, and the President of the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), Massoud Barzani. Mr Maliki and Mr Barzani had not met for a year during which their exchanges have been barbed and aggressive. [continued…]

Bombs targeting Shiites in Iraq kill at least 48

A double truck bombing tore through the village of a small Shiite ethnic minority near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, while nine blasts wracked Baghdad in a wave of violence Monday that killed at least 48 people and wounded more than 250, Iraqi officials said.

The attacks provided a grim example of U.S. military warnings that insurgents are targeting Shiites in an effort to re-ignite the kind of sectarian violence that nearly tore the country apart in 2006 and 2007.

The U.S. military has stressed that despite the rise in attacks, the Shiites are showing restraint and not retaliating as they did more than two years ago when a similar series of attacks and bombings provoked a Shiite backlash that degenerated into a sectarian slaughter claiming tens of thousands of lives. [continued…]

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The case for leaving Iraq – now

The case for leaving Iraq – now

Although every day in Iraq repeats the endless spiral of bombs in crowded bazaars and mosques — each fueling demands for retribution — things are slowly getting better. Last month, the number of violent deaths in Iraq fell to 275, down from 437 in June. And that’s a good sign for the security prospects following the redeployment of U.S. forces out of Iraq’s urban areas. In Baghdad, the violence has ebbed to the point that the Iraqi government, whose forces are now responsible for security, this week announced that over the next 40 days, it will tear down the razor-wire-topped blast walls that had for years divided the capital into a collection of fortified, warring Sunni and Shi’ite fiefdoms.

With the level of violence having been tamped down to a degree manageable by Iraqi forces, and with Iraq’s sectarian and ethnic political divisions having become an apparently intractable feature of post-Saddam political life that no amount of U.S. cajoling appears likely to resolve, this may be as good as it gets in Iraq. And if so, why should American soldiers hang around until 2011 in a war costing America in the region of $12 billion a month, and whose U.S. casualty count is nearing 4,500 dead and 30,000 wounded? [continued…]

Ex-employees claim Blackwater pimped out young Iraqi girls

Since the revelation earlier this week of allegations by two former employees of security firm Blackwater that its owner was complicit in murder in order to cover up the deliberate killing of Iraqi civilians, explosive charges have continued to emerge.

Perhaps the most shocking of those charges — quoted by MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann on Thursday from the employees’ sworn declarations — is that Blackwater was guilty of using child prostitutes at its compound in Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone and that owner Erik Prince knew of this activity and did nothing to stop it. [continued…]

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Iraqis speak of random killings committed by private Blackwater guards

Iraqis speak of random killings committed by private Blackwater guards

Guards employed by Blackwater, the US security company, shot Iraqis and killed victims in allegedly unprovoked and random attacks, it was claimed yesterday.

A Virginia court also received sworn statements from former Blackwater employees yesterday alleging that Erik Prince, the company’s founder, “views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe”.

They also accused the company of following a policy of deliberate killings and arms dealing and of employing people unfit or improperly trained to handle lethal weaponry. [continued…]

Police: 37 die in Iraq as bombs target Shiites

A suicide car bomb devastated a Shiite mosque in northern Iraq, one of a series of attacks Friday that killed at least 37 Shiite pilgrims and worshippers, police and medical officials said.

The incidents are the latest in a series that have targeted Shiites, raising concerns that insurgents are stepping up attacks, hoping to re-ignite sectarian violence that nearly tore the country apart in 2006 and 2007.

Though violence has dramatically declined in Iraq in the past two years, U.S. officials have repeatedly called the security gains fragile and cautioned that a waning insurgency still has the ability to pull off sporadic, high profile attacks. [continued…]

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Blackwater founder implicated in murder

Blackwater founder implicated in murder

A former Blackwater employee and an ex-US Marine who has worked as a security operative for the company have made a series of explosive allegations in sworn statements filed on August 3 in federal court in Virginia. The two men claim that the company’s owner, Erik Prince, may have murdered or facilitated the murder of individuals who were cooperating with federal authorities investigating the company. The former employee also alleges that Prince “views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe,” and that Prince’s companies “encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life.”

In their testimony, both men also allege that Blackwater was smuggling weapons into Iraq. One of the men alleges that Prince turned a profit by transporting “illegal” or “unlawful” weapons into the country on Prince’s private planes. They also charge that Prince and other Blackwater executives destroyed incriminating videos, emails and other documents and have intentionally deceived the US State Department and other federal agencies. The identities of the two individuals were sealed out of concerns for their safety. [continued…]

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There’s still a war in Iraq. It isn’t ours

There’s still a war in Iraq. It isn’t ours

The Iraq war is over — for us.

That doesn’t mean that the United States won or achieved all of its aims or that fighting among Iraqis will stop. It doesn’t mean that Iraq is stable, democratic and relatively free of corruption.

The war is over for the United States because the Iraqis don’t really need or want American forces around anymore. Every time U.S. troops roll out of the gate with their Iraqi counterparts in Baghdad, they discredit the Iraqi forces in the eyes of their people. They make their Iraqi partners’ jobs harder. Although senior U.S. commanders understand and accept this fact privately, they will never admit it. [continued…]

Iraqi army officers pulled $4.8-million bank heist, police say

When thieves shot dead eight guards and made off with $4.8 million in one of Iraq’s biggest-ever bank heists last week, fingers quickly pointed at the Sunni-led insurgency.

Extremists must be turning to crime to finance their activities, so the hypothesis went, and $4.8 million would pay for a lot of bombs.

But after a series of arrests and a sweep of a government compound, Iraqi police say the culprits were Iraqi army officers attached to the elite unit guarding Shiite Vice President Adel Abdul Mehdi. [continued…]

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Iranian dissidents’ fate in Iraq shows limits of U.S. sway

Iranian dissidents’ fate in Iraq shows limits of U.S. sway

Last September, Gen. David H. Petraeus told reporters in Baghdad that the United States had been assured by the Iraqi government that the 3,400 Iranian dissidents in a camp in eastern Iraq would continue to be protected after the Americans turned over responsibility for the camp to Iraqi forces.

Last week’s bloody melee between Iraqi police officers and the residents of the camp has not only raised fresh doubts in Washington about the worth of these assurances, but has also exposed just how little leverage American officials now have in a country they largely controlled for almost six years.

It has also forced the Obama administration to confront some of the thorny issues that bedeviled its predecessor: how to prevent Iraq from falling deeper under Tehran’s influence, and how to fashion a tough Iran policy amid delicate negotiations to dismantle the country’s burgeoning nuclear program. [continued…]

Iraqis fear latest bombings signal return of al Qaida in Iraq

Bombings at five Shiite Muslim mosques killed 29 worshippers Friday in a series of attacks that Iraqi army and police officers are interpreting as a sign that insurgents are determined to destabilize the country now that American forces have withdrawn from Iraqi cities and towns.

“You will see them attempting to start the sectarian violence again,” said a high-ranking Iraqi army officer who commands a unit in western Baghdad. He asked not to be named because he isn’t authorized to speak to the media.

Iraqi army and police officers told McClatchy that the pattern of attacks against the armed forces and civilians resembles the tactics that the extremist Sunni group al Qaida in Iraq used before 2006. The increase in car bombs, roadside bombs and death threats indicates that the Islamic extremist group is attempting to restore ground it lost during the “surge” of American forces in 2008, the officers said. [continued…]

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It’s time for the US to declare victory and go home

It’s time for the US to declare victory and go home

As the old saying goes, “guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.” Since the signing of the 2009 Security Agreement, we are guests in Iraq, and after six years in Iraq, we now smell bad to the Iraqi nose. Today the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) are good enough to keep the Government of Iraq (GOI) from being overthrown by the actions of Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), the Baathists, and the Shia violent extremists that might have toppled it a year or two ago. Iraq may well collapse into chaos of other causes, but we have made the ISF strong enough for the internal security mission. Perhaps it is one of those infamous paradoxes of counterinsurgency that while the ISF is not good in any objective sense, it is good enough for Iraq in 2009. Despite this foreboding disclaimer about an unstable future for Iraq, the United States has achieved our objectives in Iraq. Prime Minister (PM) Maliki hailed June 30th as a “great victory,” implying the victory was over the US. Leaving aside his childish chest pounding, he was more right than he knew. We too ought to declare victory and bring our combat forces home. Due to our tendency to look after the tactical details and miss the proverbial forest for the trees, this critically important strategic realization is in danger of being missed. [continued…]

Iraqi raid poses problem for U.S.

Violent clashes continued for a second day Wednesday between Iraqi troops and members of an Iranian opposition group whose camp the Iraqis stormed Tuesday, presenting the first major dilemma for the U.S. government since Iraq proclaimed its sovereignty a month ago.

At least eight Iranians have been killed and 400 wounded since Tuesday, when hundreds of Iraqi police and soldiers in riot gear plowed into Camp Ashraf, northeast of Baghdad, using Humvees donated by the U.S. military, according to group leaders and Abdul Nasir al-Mahdawi, the governor of Diyala province.

Camp residents described the day’s events as a massacre and the aftermath as a tense stalemate. [continued…]

Iraq in throes of environmental catastrophe, experts say

You wake up in the morning to find your nostrils clogged. Houses and trees have vanished beneath a choking brown smog. A hot wind blasts fine particles through doors and windows, coating everything in sight and imparting an eerie orange glow.

Dust storms are a routine experience in Iraq, but lately they’ve become a whole lot more common.

“Now it seems we have dust storms nearly every day,” said Raed Hussein, 31, an antiques dealer who had to rush his 5-year-old son to a hospital during a recent squall because the boy couldn’t breathe. “We suffer from lack of electricity, we suffer from explosions, and now we are suffering even more because of this terrible dust.

“It must be a punishment from God,” he added, offering a view widely held among Iraqis seeking to explain their apocalyptic weather of late. “I think God is angry with the deeds of the Iraqi people.”

The reality is probably scarier. Iraq is in the throes of what some officials are calling an environmental catastrophe, and the increased frequency of dust storms is only the most visible manifestation. [continued…]

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After Kurdish vote, Talabani pledges to rebuild party

After Kurdish vote, Talabani pledges to rebuild party

Facing what could prove a turning point in tumultuous Kurdish politics, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani vowed Tuesday that he would lead the revival of his party after a surprisingly successful challenge by opponents in last week’s election led some to speculate that it might be the beginning of the party’s end.

In an interview, Talabani, the 75-year-old politician and former guerrilla who founded the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) more than 30 years ago, sought to cast the election results in the best light. But the success of the Change list, led by former Talabani colleagues , against an alliance of the PUK and the other leading Kurdish party clearly surprised him.

More than a contest among parochial groups in a relatively quiet region, the struggle for political power in the Kurdish north could have sweeping repercussions for Iraq’s mercurial politics. The alliance between Talabani’s party and Kurdish President Massoud Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party has held for years, though no one has really forgotten the civil war they fought in the 1990s. Their claim to represent Kurdish consensus is crucial, too, in negotiations with Baghdad over today’s most pressing issues: a law to share Iraq’s oil revenue and a resolution to the disputed border between Iraq’s Arab and Kurdish regions. [continued…]

Iraq force soon to be a coalition of one

Commanders of the Multi-National Force-Iraq, as the American-led coalition is formally called, have a looming nomenclature problem.

Two days from now, there will no longer be any other nations with troops in Iraq — no “multi” in the Multi-National Force. As Iraqi forces have increasingly taken the lead, the United States is the last of the “coalition of the willing” that the Bush administration first brought together in 2003.

That is partly because the Iraqi Parliament left suddenly for summer recess without voting to extend an agreement for the British military to keep a residual training force of 100 soldiers in Iraq. As a result, those troops must withdraw to Kuwait by Friday, according to a British diplomat, who declined to be identified in keeping with his government’s practice.

As for the other two small remnants of the coalition, the Romanians and Australians, the Australians will be gone by July 31, too, and the Romanians left last Thursday, according to the Romanian chargé d’affaires, Cristian Voicu. NATO will keep a small training presence in Iraq, but its troops were never considered part of the Multi-National Force because of opposition to the war from many NATO countries. [continued…]

Gates: Some US troops may be leaving Iraq early

The United States is considering speeding up its withdrawal from Iraq because of the sustained drop in violence there, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Wednesday following discussions with his top commanders in the war.

“I think there’s at least some chance of a modest acceleration,” this year, Gates said.

It was the first suggestion that the Obama administration might rethink its difficult choice to leave a heavy fighting force in Iraq long past the election of an American president who opposed the war. [continued…]

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Deadly clash underscores rift over interpretation of U.S.-Iraq deal

Deadly clash underscores rift over interpretation of U.S.-Iraq deal

When insurgents attacked an American convoy with AK-47 rounds and a couple of grenades on a dusty highway in a Baghdad suburb this week, U.S. soldiers returned fire, chased the suspects through narrow alleyways and raided houses.

Tuesday’s clash killed two Iraqi adults and a 14-year-old and wounded four people, including two children.

When the shooting subsided, another confrontation began. A senior Iraqi army commander who arrived at the scene concluded that the Americans had fired indiscriminately at civilians and ordered his men to take the U.S. soldiers into custody. The U.S. military said the soldiers had acted in self-defense and had sought to avoid civilian casualties; U.S. commanders at the scene persuaded the Iraqis to back down.

The incident, apparently the first time a senior Iraqi commander has sought to detain U.S. soldiers, signals a potential escalation of tensions between U.S. and Iraqi forces trying to find a new equilibrium as Iraq assumes more responsibility for its security. [continued…]

Iraq presses U.S. on pact with Sunnis in Turkey

Iraq’s government said Thursday that it was demanding explanations from the United States and Turkey about a protocol signed this year between an American official and a representative of a group of Iraqi Sunni insurgents in Istanbul as a precursor to negotiations between the two sides.

The Iraqi government said in a statement that the protocol amounts to “an interference in Iraq’s internal political affairs” and that it was expecting “clear explanations” from American and Turkish officials at the embassies in Baghdad.

Contacts between the American government and Iraqi insurgent groups are nothing new, and the most recent ones have occurred with the coordination of an Iraqi government reconciliation unit attached to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s office. The goal is to get insurgents to renounce violence and embrace the political process.

But the release of the document of the protocol appears to be an attempt to embarrass the United States and show how deeply involved it remains in Iraq’s affairs. It also underscores just how hostile Mr. Maliki’s Shiite-led government remains to any serious engagement with Sunni insurgents, especially those suspected of having links to Saddam Hussein’s former ruling Baath Party. [continued…]

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NEWS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Muntader al-Zaidi

When the shoe fits

In a war that has been punctuated by iconic moments, the shoe will be the symbol that most likely endures longest in connecting George Bush to Iraq. In 2003, the sight of a statue of Saddam Hussein being assaulted with footwear highlighted the moment in which, at Mr Bush’s instigation Saddam’s regime had visibly lost power. In 2008, the sight of the US president ducking to avoid flying shoes conveyed the eagerness among many Iraqis to witness Mr Bush’s exit from power.

While Muntader al-Zaidi may have been simply been venting a spontaneous outburst of anger as he hurled both his shoes at the president of the United States of America, his act of defiance struck a chord with many Iraqis along with fellow Arabs across the region.

As Hazim Edress, a resident of Mosul, told The New York Times: “He has done what the whole world could not.” [continued…]


(via Firedoglake)

Editor’s CommentMarc Lynch is concerned that the Muntader al-Zaidi story might distract attention from Human Rights Watch’s new report, The Quality of Justice: Failings of Iraq’s Central Criminal Court. But reports, however worthy of attention, rarely garner much public interest. Indeed, if reports and rumors about Zaidi’s mistreatment in detention turn out to be true, his case may well serve to draw attention towards Iraq’s failed justice system.

This is a case where one would have thought that out of pure self-interest and political expediency, the White House would be pushing for Zaidi’s prompt release simply to serve its own public relations interests. The longer that takes to happen, the more potent a symbol Zaidi will become.

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NEWS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Iran’s plausible denials

Doubting the evidence against Iran

American circles in Baghdad and Washington are probably not pleased with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s plan for a special panel to investigate allegations of Iranian interference in Iraq. Many U.S. officials are already convinced of the worst and, for years, U.S. officials have now aired accusations against Iran, insisting that Tehran is stoking Iraq’s violence by keeping up a flow of money, weapons and trained fighters into the country. The Iraqi government, however, remains unconvinced — with good reason.

“We want to find really good evidence and not evidence made on speculations,” Ali al-Dabbagh, a spokesman for the Iraqi government, told reporters in Baghdad on Sunday. Last week an Iraqi government delegation went to Tehran to discuss the allegations of Iranian involvement in the Iraqi militias, the government said. Details of the evidence presented in Tehran remains hazy, but at the same time American officials in Baghdad and Washington have never offered a convincing case publicly to support their allegations. [complete article]

Iraqi government caught in the middle as US directs new accusations at Iran

In line with the American accusations, the Iraqi government has confirmed that it has “concrete evidence” that Iranian weapons are flowing into Iraq. Even so, Iraqi officials have been at pains to draw a distinction between saying that these weapons were produced in Iran without necessarily concluding that they were supplied by Iran.

In an interview with The Washington Post, the Iraqi government spokesman Ali al Dabbagh said: “The truth came out; there is evidence of Iranian weapons in Iraq. Now we need to document who sent them.”

The Christian Science Monitor noted that the Iraqi delegation’s visit to Tehran “coincided with the release of the annual US terrorism report, which declared Iran, as in years past, to be the ‘most significant’ state sponsor of terrorism.” The report added: “It also quietly raised the official number of US and Iraqi soldiers allegedly ‘killed’ by Iranian actions in Iraq from ‘hundreds’ to ‘thousands’ – a surprise to analysts sceptical even of the lower figure.” [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — If the Iranians are guilty as charged, there does seem to be something thoroughly American in their approach — the training and arming of a proxy force and studious application of the principle of “plausible deniability.” It has more than the aroma of Reagan-era support for the Contras. Shouldn’t Elliot Abrams, John Negroponte, Oliver North et al feel flattered?

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NEWS, ANALYSIS, INTERVIEW & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Foreign interference

Hezbollah trains Iraqis in Iran, Pentagon’s New York Times spokesman says

Militants from the Lebanese group Hezbollah have been training Iraqi militia fighters at a camp near Tehran, according to American interrogation reports that the United States has supplied to the Iraqi government.

An American official said the account of Hezbollah’s role was provided by four Shiite militia members who were captured in Iraq late last year and questioned separately.

The United States has long charged that the Iranians were training Iraqi militia fighters in Iran, which Iran has consistently denied, and there have been previous reports about Hezbollah operatives in Iraq.

But the Americans say the reports of Hezbollah’s role at the Iranian camp offer important details about Iranian assistance to the militias, including efforts Iran appears to be making to train the fighters in unobtrusive ways. [complete article]

Iraq: Al-Sadr refuses to meet Baghdad delegation In Iran

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki dispatched a delegation of leading Shi’ite figures to Iran last week in order to present Tehran with mounting evidence of Iran’s support for rogue militias in Iraq. But Shi’ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose militia continues to battle Iraqi and U.S. forces in Baghdad and other areas and who has been in Iran for months, refused to meet with the delegation.

The Iraqi delegation reportedly met with Qasim Suleimani, the head of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guard Corps’ Qods Force, on May 1, and was expected to meet again with him on May 2. The force is suspected of being the main supplier of Iranian-made weapons to Iraq. It has also been linked to the training of Iraqi militiamen. The delegation was also slated to meet with Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

On May 2, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini downplayed the delegation’s visit, saying, “Iranian officials will hold talks with this delegation in line with helping settle differences and ongoing clashes in Iraq.” [complete article]

Interview with Mohsen Hakim

Mohsen Hakim is the Tehran representative of the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council, and a son of the SIIC leader, Abdelaziz Hakim.

LAT: So why is there postponement of the next round of talks between Iran and the U.S.?
HAKIM: There are technical problems.

LAT: What do you mean by “technical”?
HAKIM: I mean, anything that happens in the negotiations has an impact on Lebanon, Palestine and Afghanistan. Look, Iraqi security issue is not separated from other issues in the Middle East. On the whole, security in the region is not divisible. If there is no security in Iraq, there is no security anywhere in the region. We look at the security of Iraq as a organic security package for the whole region.

LAT: In fact, you want Iran and U.S. negotiations in Iraq to be all-encompassing negotiations?
HAKIM: Look, we as Iraqis care most now about our own problems. But we look at the security of Iraq as a common case between Iran and the U.S. I tell you with 100% certainty that if the security of Iraq is settled, the region will be affected positively. Iraq is not an isolated issue. Remember that. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — “Unobtrusive ways” — now Michael Gordon could have chose an equally suitable phrase: plausible deniability.

The fact that the US military keeps pushing the story that Hezbollah is training Shia militia fighters in Iran raises a question that, as far as I know, still remains unanswered: Did the US have a role in the assassination of top Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyeh on February 12 in Damascus? At the time it was assumed that Mossad was behind the killing, but last month M K Bhadrakumar wrote in >Asia Times:

Fars [the Iranian news agency, which is close to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps] named Saudi Prince Banda al-Sultan, formerly Saudi ambassador in Washington, as responsible and that the Saudis were retaliating for the 1996 car bomb attack at the Abdul Aziz airbase in Khobar near Dahran in Saudi Arabia, which was allegedly planned and executed by Mughniyeh. The Fars report would have brought a welcome relief to Israeli intelligence, since the prevailing impression in the region was that Syria would accuse Israel of involvement in Mughniyeh’s assassination, which in turn would be the signal for Hezbollah to retaliate and for Israel to hit at Lebanon and possibly even Syria.

The fact that Iran would push a story blaming the Saudis may imply that they were willing to disown Mughniyeh and also that he wasn’t the strategic asset that the US imagined him to be.

If there is a consistent failing in American analysis it seems to be in, 1. over emphasizing the significance of individuals — we have a fascination with the acquisition of personal power and thus find it difficult to discern networks and social trends whose existence doesn’t depend on kingpins, and 2. in the homogenization of diversity — we see entities instead of seeing complexity. Any time anyone says “the Iranians”, one has to wonder, who are they talking about?

It’s not hard to understand why the US government has always found foreign relations easier when it can work with dictators. If you can cut deals with The Man, you don’t have to worry about the people.

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NEWS & OPINION: An attack on Iran?

United States is drawing up plans to strike on Iranian insurgency camp

The US military is drawing up plans for a “surgical strike” against an insurgent training camp inside Iran if Republican Guards continue with attempts to destabilise Iraq, western intelligence sources said last week. One source said the Americans were growing increasingly angry at the involvement of the Guards’ special-operations Quds force inside Iraq, training Shi’ite militias and smuggling weapons into the country.

Despite a belligerent stance by Vice-President Dick Cheney, the administration has put plans for an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities on the back burner since Robert Gates replaced Donald Rumsfeld as defence secretary in 2006, the sources said.

However, US commanders are increasingly concerned by Iranian interference in Iraq and are determined that recent successes by joint Iraqi and US forces in the southern port city of Basra should not be reversed by the Quds Force. [complete article]

Bluff and bloodshed

If there’s a war between the United States and Iran, it may well start on the water. After all, it’s happened before. Twenty years ago American ships were under fire in the Persian Gulf, and mines laid by the mullahs’ men nearly sank a U.S. guided missile cruiser. In April 1988 the American and Iranian navies fought the biggest air-sea battle waged since World War II. By the time it was over, carrier-based U.S. attack planes had sunk the frigate Sahand and disabled the frigate Sabalan, the pride of the Iranian navy.

That’s why the comment by Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Tuesday about the brief deployment of a second U.S. aircraft carrier to the gulf was so terse and so telling. “I don’t see it as an escalation,” Gates said. “I think it could be seen, though, as a reminder.”

Gates would know. He was deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency back in 1988. He has seen firsthand the treacherous complexities, the bluff and the bloodshed, of war with Iran, whether fought in the shadows or on the high seas. And anyone who was out in the gulf at the time, as I was, can see similarities between then and now. But looking back at the last undeclared war with Iran, who is reminded of what, precisely? The challenge is to draw the right lessons. [complete article]

War with Iran? That will be for the next president

There was a moment in April 1990, when Saddam Hussein was appearing on the covers of all of the news magazines, threatening to “burn” half of Israel and brandishing new chemical and biological weapons, when we should have known that the United States would eventually go to war with Iraq. It was almost four months before Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and most people hadn’t thought much about the country, but war gamers and planners in the Pentagon began shifting their attention.

We are now at a similar moment with Iran. Short of Iran invading one of its neighbors or attacking U.S. forces in some obvious and gross way, the Iran war isn’t going to be Dick Cheney’s war. It will be waged by Hillary Clinton, John McCain or Barack Obama. [complete article]

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