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We reproduce here the May 14th edition of the excellent newsletter of Iraq Occupation Focus which monitors the real situation in occupied Iraq. It comes out about once a month and we recommend subscribing to it. Iraq Occupation Focus
www.iraqoccupationfocus.org.uk
Newsletter No. 121
May 14th, 2009 This IOF Newsletter is produced as a free service for all those opposed to the occupation. In order to strengthen our campaign, please make sure you sign up to receive the free newsletter automatically – go to: http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/iraqfocus. Please also ask all those who share our opposition to the increasingly brutal US-UK occupation to do likewise. Military news More violence in Iraq Dahr Jamail reports for Truth Out (April 27th): Last week brought the worst violence Iraq has seen in over a year, with at least 96 Iraqis killed and 157 wounded in two massive suicide bombings. Over 35 bombings have rocked Baghdad this month alone. Violence most likely related to the growing battle between government forces and the Sahwa, who are stepping up attacks against government and US forces, continues. A US military raid of a home in Kut brought the deaths of a man and his sister-in-law, who just happened to be the wife of a local clan leader; additionally, four Iraqis, one of them, a police officer, were arrested. Protests erupted as angry Iraqis denounced the raid. During a funeral procession in Kut where the cloth-draped coffins of the dead were carried, protesters called the Americans "criminal occupiers" and demanded the release of the seized men. Combat Operations in Fallujah Dahr Jamail reports for Truth Out (May 4th): Indicative of the rapidly deteriorating situation in Iraq, on May 1 the US military reported the death of a Naval petty officer who was killed "on April 30 while conducting combat operations in Fallujah, Iraq." That same day, the military announced the deaths of two marines "killed while conducting combat operations against enemy forces here April 30." Apparently, all is not well in Fallujah and al-Anbar province. The US military, having met the fiercest resistance throughout their occupation of Iraq in these areas, is once again conducting combat operations there. With exit deadline looming, U.S. battles insurgents in Mosul CNN reports (May 8th): As the deadline nears for U.S. troops to exit major Iraqi cities, units in Mosul are in the midst of a months-long operation to sweep out extremist fighters. The decision on whether to keep troops in the restive northern city beyond June 30 has been a sticking point between the United States and Iraq. Parts of the city remain under insurgent control and high-profile attacks continue. Iraqi kills US soldiers in Mosul Al-Jazeera reports (May 1st): A man wearing an Iraqi army uniform has shot dead two US soldiers and injured three others in the northern city of Mosul, US military officials say. Reports said the man, who was killed after the attack, opened fire on a group of soldiers at a combat outpost south of the city. A police officer in Mosul identified the assailant as Hassan al-Dulaimi, a soldier who also served as the imam of a mosque at an Iraqi army training centre south of Mosul, the capital of Ninawa. G.I.’s Kill 2, Including a 12-Year-Old, After a Threat to a Patrol in Iraq NY Times reports (May 8th): American soldiers shot and killed two people in the northern city of Mosul, one of them a 12-year-old boy the military said had thrown a hand grenade at a passing patrol, according to a United States military statement. Witnesses in Mosul denied that the boy had thrown the grenade, saying he was merely standing near the grenade thrower, who they said was a man in his 20s. Will Obama Vacate Iraq? Vasir Khan writes for Znet (May 6th): At present, the U.S. has 142,000 combat troops in Iraq. But what is often glossed over is the fact that there is almost a parallel army of American mercenaries and private military contractors whose numbers range from 100,000 to 150,000. Thus, both the regular fighting force and these mercenaries are virtual foreign occupiers. However, the planned withdrawal of U.S. troops will not amount to ending the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Obama wants to keep more than 50,000 occupying troops in Iraq. His innovation, if we can call it so, lies in classifying them as ‘non-combat' troops or a ‘transitional force.' Instead of ‘combat brigades,' the relabelled ‘transitional force' will carry on the ‘targeted counterterrorism missions'. What this in effect means is that that the 50,000 soldiers will continue to accomplish the ‘mission' that the former U.S. president, George W. Bush, had laid out for them. Abuse Soldier: Green planned to kill Iraqi family AP report (May 1st): After raping an Iraqi teen and killing her family, a former U.S. Army soldier placed a pillow over the young girl's face, then fired multiple shots from an AK-47, killing her, two ex-soldiers said. Jesse Spielman and James Paul Barker, both former members of the 101st Airborne Division who were with Steven Dale Green during the crimes, told jurors at his trial that Green, Barker and another soldier put on lightweight black long underwear, known to soldiers as "ninja suits," as a disguise before going to the family's home on March 12, 2006. Barker said he and Green had discussed a plan to attack the family. Barker, who is serving a 90-year prison sentence for his role in the attack, said part of the plan was "that Green was going to kill whoever was in the house." Former US soldier found guilty of raping and shooting Iraqi girl AP reports (May 8th): A jury convicted a former US soldier of raping and fatally shooting a 14-year-old Iraqi girl after killing her parents and younger sister. FBI E-Mail Says Bush Authorized Abuse of Iraqis The Public Record reports (April 28th): A senior FBI agent stationed in Iraq in 2004 claimed in an e-mail that President George W. Bush signed an executive order approving the use of military dogs, sleep deprivation and other harsh tactics to intimidate Iraqi detainees. According to the e-mail, Bush’s alleged executive order authorized interrogators to use military dogs, “stress positions,” sleep “management,” loud music and “sensory deprivation through the use of hoods, etc.” to extract information from detainees in Iraq, which is considered a violation of the Geneva Conventions ban against cruel and unusual punishments. Carshalton to Camp Cropper: nightmare trip of an innocent Iraqi The Times reports (April 29th): Kadhum al-Sarraj is the last detainee from Britain to be held by US forces in Iraq. He remains in the army’s foreboding Camp Cropper detention centre on the outskirts of Baghdad even though an Iraqi court has ruled that he should be freed. Instead, the Iraqi businessman who lives in Britain is languishing — as he has for the past seven months — behind bars, dressed in a bright yellow jumpsuit like the ones worn by 3,300 other detainees in US custody on the site. From suburban southwest London his wife, Shereen Nasser, 25, a British citizen, has mounted a tenacious but fruitless battle to free him since he was picked up on a trip to Iraq last year. US interpreter who witnessed torture in Iraq shot herself with service rifle The Independent reports (April 26th): It is possible that one of the victims of the United States' torture policy is a young, devout Mormon woman from Arizona called Alyssa Peterson. She was a soldier who not only saw the rough interrogation methods that the US military used on Iraqi prisoners, but was deeply troubled by them. Some weeks after formally protesting about them to her superiors, and asking to be reassigned, she took her gun and killed herself. The cause of her death was kept secret for two years, and the mystery of what Peterson witnessed, and the content of the notes she made, still goes on. Rapist, Untouchable Iraqi Police Islam Online reports (April 27th): Salman [not his real name] says he was locked up, beaten, raped and humiliated for long months. His abusers, according to him, were not vicious gangs or armed militias, but rather those who, by law, were supposed to protect him. "I was beaten more than four times per week, and sometimes I stayed the whole night inside a room being interrogated and tortured," the young man told IslamOnline.net, recalling his 9-month ordeal in police custody. "After one month…they started to rape me every week," he added with a painful look in his eyes. Salman was detained for nine months without being told why and was never allowed a visit by a lawyer despite his family's frantic efforts to find his whereabouts. Iraq: Stop Executing Prisoners Reuters report (May 6th): Iraq should institute an immediate moratorium on the death penalty in the aftermath of a large number of executions on May 3, 2009, Human Rights Watch said. According to United Nations officials in Baghdad, the Iraqi government hanged 12 people in Baghdad on May 3 who had been convicted of criminal offenses. The UN officials said they believed that another 115 prisoners could face execution in the near future. "This is a major step backward for human rights in Iraq," said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. Torture and Impunity in Iraqi Prisons Antiwar.com reports (May 5th): A new UN human rights report [.pdf] examining Iraq shows that torture of prisoners by Iraqi authorities is widespread and accountability is nonexistent. “The lack of accountability of the perpetrators of such human rights abuses reinforces the culture of impunity,” the UN bluntly states. The 30-page report by the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq examined conditions in Iraq from July to December 2008. As of December 2008, there were 41,271 people being held in prisons throughout Iraq, 15,058 of them in the custody of the U.S.-controlled “Multi-National Forces.” The UN found that “many” of the prisoners “have been deprived of their liberty for months or even years in overcrowded cells” and expressed concerns “about violations of the minimum rules of due process as many did not have access to defense counsel, or were not formally charged with a crime or appeared before a judge.” While the report primarily focused on Iraqi run prisons, it notes that in U.S.-run prisons “detainees have remained in custody for prolonged periods without judicial review of their cases.” US interrogators may have killed dozens Raw Story reports (May 6th): United States interrogators killed nearly four dozen detainees during or after their interrogations, according a report published by a human rights researcher based on a Human Rights First report and followup investigations. Perhaps the most macabre case occurred in Iraq, which was documented in a Human Rights First report in 2006. “Nagem Sadoon Hatab… a 52-year-old Iraqi, was killed while in U.S. custody at a holding camp close to Nasiriyah,” the group wrote. In another graphic instance, a former Iraqi general was beaten by US forces and suffocated to death. The military officer charged in the death was given just 60 days house arrest. Daily Life Six years after Saddam Hussein, Nouri al-Maliki tightens his grip on Iraq The Guardian reports (April 30th): Baghdad has always produced more than its fair share of surreal conversations, but few can match the one I had with three Iraqi intelligence officers in the garden of a newly opened restaurant a few weeks ago. The three were former members of Saddam's notorious Mukhabarat. The senior officer said: "Maliki is running a dictatorship - everything is run by his office and advisers, he is surrounded by his party and clan members. They form a tight knot that is running Iraq now. He is not building a country, he is building a state for his own party and his own people." Critics say Maliki is concentrating power in his office (the office of the prime minister) and his advisers are running "a government inside a government", bypassing ministers and parliament. He has created at least one intelligence service, dominated by his clan and party members, and taken two military units - the anti-terrorism unit and the Baghdad brigade - under his direct command. A senior official in the council of ministers offered a less sympathetic view of Maliki's growing monopoly on the levers of power. "Iraq is ruled by institutions that are not covered by the law or the constitution, they have their own prisons and intelligence service, working for the benefit of the government, not the state." Gunfight Breaks Out as Iraqi Soldiers Try to Arrest Trade Officials NY Times reports (May 2nd): An effort by members of Parliament to prosecute what they say is a nest of corruption in the Trade Ministry led to a gun battle between ministry officials and Iraqi soldiers and the sudden disappearance of the trade minister and several senior ministry officials. The gun battle occurred when anticorruption officials accompanied by Iraqi soldiers went to the ministry’s headquarters in the Mansour district of Baghdad to carry out arrest warrants on corruption charges against nine officials. Only the minister’s spokesman, Muhammad Hannoun, was arrested. The others fled after a 15-minute firefight between the military and the minister’s security detail, according to the head of Iraq’s public integrity commission, Rahim al-Okaili. Iraq's Wrecked Environment Jeffrey St. Clair & Joshua Frank report for Counterpunch (May 1st): More than 15 years later, the dire health consequences of our first radioactive bombing campaign in this region are coming into focus. Since 1990, the incidence rate of leukemia in Iraq has increased over 600 percent. Detection and treatment of cancers was made unnecessarily difficult by Iraq’s forced isolation under a regime of sanctions, producing what was described by former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan as “a humanitarian crisis.” The bombing of Iraq’s infrastructure has had further substantial public health implications. Bombed-out industrial plants and factories have polluted groundwater. The damage to sewage-treatment plants, with reports that raw sewage formed massive pools of muck in the streets of Baghdad immediately after Bush’s “Shock and Awe” campaign, is also likely to result in poisoning rivers as well as humans; cases of typhoid among Iraqi citizens have risen tenfold since 1991, largely due to polluted drinking water. According to Friends of the Earth, the fallout from burning oil debris — laced with poisonous chemicals such as mercury, sulfur, and furans — has created a toxic sea surface affecting the health of birds and marine life. Freedom of the press threatened in Iraq Aswat al-Iraq reports (May 2nd): The Journalistic Freedoms Observatory (JFO) has warned that journalistic freedoms in Iraq are in peril, noting that 256 violations against journalists and media workers have been recorded in the country throughout one year. In its annual report for the period May 3, 2008-2009, the observatory said that media personnel in Iraq were subjected to 58 physical assaults, 98 arrests and 14 detentions by U.S. and Iraqi security forces. Local and military authorities have closed down two local radio stations in Baghdad and Mosul, the observatory added. Corporate Takeover Blackwater era ending in Iraq CNN reports (May 7th): The troubled Blackwater era ends in Iraq as another firm takes over the once-dominant company's security services contract in Baghdad. Triple Canopy, a Herndon, Virginia-based company, picks up the expiring contract of the security firm formerly known as Blackwater Worldwide, which changed its name to XE a few months ago. The U.S. State Department decided not to renew XE's contract in January. Many XE employees are expected to go to work for Triple Canopy, which already had a State Department contract in Iraq. Its new contract increases its share of the security work. DynCorp International also has a State Department contract for work in Iraq. In January, five former Blackwater security guards pleaded not guilty to charges of voluntary manslaughter and other serious crimes stemming from their involvement in the September 16, 2007, incident in a Baghdad square. The company does not face any charges. Anti-war news May Day Greetings to the Workers and Labor Movement of Iraq US Labor Against the War write (April 29th): On behalf of the 187 labor organizations affiliated with U.S. Labor Against the War and the millions of union members they represent, we extend our warmest fraternal May Day greeting. We are proud to stand with you in a common struggle for peace, social justice, dignity and human rights for all people. On a day in which the working people of the world celebrate their struggles for dignity, fair treatment, jobs at decent wages, and justice at work, we must take note that for most Iraqi workers these fundamental rights remain out of reach. Such basic needs as clean water, reliable electricity, decent housing, jobs, healthcare and education are still unmet. And we shall continue to support your struggle to prevent privatization of Iraq’s basic resources, foremost its oil and gas, and its essential public services and industries. No decisions regarding the long term development of Iraq's energy industry should be made until full sovereignty and self-determination for the Iraqi people have been restored. Upcoming events EVERY MONTH, LONDON: MONTHLY MEETINGS OF IRAQ OCCUPATION FOCUS. 2nd Thursday of each month.
Next meeting: 7.30pm, May 14th 2009, Conference Room, Indian YMCA, 41 Fitzroy Square, W1T 6AQ. (tubes: Warren Street, Euston Square) See www.iraqoccupationfocus.org.uk/
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