16/12/07

Basra in the grip of militias
Roads to Iraq
Although the major parties in Basra signed a truce document as Al-Hayat reported today, but one Iraqi news site spotted intensive presence of Mahdi Army militias in key, strategic neighborhoods of the city which was also expected by the previous report of Al-Hayat saying: The three Shiite Parties will try to exert or share control on Basra, Al-Fadhila Party [Basra’s governor is a member] to control “South Oil Company”, the Supreme Council imposes control the security forces in parallel with the presence of Mahdi Army. Iraqi writer and philosopher Muhanad Al-Semawi agrees with Al-Hayat, but he argues that the power share is more complicated than this, in his article “The Shiite Political Movements in Iraq”….

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5 million Iraqi orphans, anti-corruption board reveals
Voices of Iraq
Iraq’s anti-corruption board revealed on Saturday that there were five million Iraqi orphans as reported by official government statistics, urging the government, parliament, and NGOs to be in constant contact with Iraq’s parentless children. “The government should set up an institutional or legislative program to help the Iraqi orphans. Iraqi is an oil-rich country and it is not acceptable that its orphans remain groaning in this tragedy,” the anti-corruption board chief, Moussa Faraj, said during a conference in Baghdad dedicated to orphans in Iraq. “The board on its own cannot meet the Iraqi orphans’ needs, but there should be an organization or even a ministry to provide care for orphans,” he said. The Iraqi parliament’s women & family committee had proposed a draft law to set up a fund for the orphans….

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I felt a new terror on Basra’s streets
Islamic militias are waging a brutal campaign for control in Iraq’s second city as British troops give way to local forces
Marie Colvin, TimesOnLine
… One woman found in “a red dress” had a 9mm bullet wound in her left hand, three in her right hand, three in her right upper arm, and three in her back. Two of the women were beheaded, one with a saw. Residents say police have not been investigating. “Everyone knows the militias are doing this, but the police live in fear of them. We all do,” said a middle-aged businessman who was too afraid to give his name. The walls of Basra would be a good place to start looking for the killers. One graffito on a wall bordering the main Al-Dijari road reads: “We warn all women of Basra, especially those who are not wearing abbaya [a long, loose black cloak worn over everyday clothes], that we will kill you.” It is signed in the name of an offshoot of the Mahdi Army, the strongest militia in Basra. It is not just women who live in fear. Professionals such as engineers, doctors and scientists have been dragged from their homes and murdered…

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Balkanized Homecoming
As Iraqi Refugees Start to Trickle Back, Authorities Worry About How They Will Fit Into the New Baghdad
Karen DeYoung, Washington Post Staff Writer
When the Iraqi government last month invited home the 1.4 million refugees who had fled this war-ravaged country for Syria — and said it would send buses to pick them up — the United Nations and the U.S. military reacted with horror. U.N. refugee officials immediately advised against the move, saying any new arrivals risked homelessness, unemployment and deprivation in a place still struggling to take care of the people already here (…) At least one of every six Iraqis — about 4.5 million people — has left home, some for other parts of Iraq, others for neighboring nations. Many have run out of money and options in Syria, Jordan and other Arab countries, all of which have recently intensified efforts to evict Iraqi refugees. Others have exhausted the patience and resources of family and friends. Lured by reports of security improvements and encouraged by a government eager to demonstrate normalcy, they have started to trickle back over the past two months… Kareem Sadi Haadi, 48, an engineer who now works in a shoe store in Baghdad’s Karrada neighborhood, said he returned from Damascus last month with his wife and daughter only because his savings ran out and he was not allowed to work legally in Syria. He said he is trying to save enough money to flee Iraq again. The Iraqi government should not be telling refugees that the country is secure or offering to f! erry the m back from Syria, Haadi said, adding, “They are misleading Iraqis 100 percent. Eighty percent of those who want to come back is because of residency complications in Syria.”…

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Handover in Basra as killings go on
Peter Beaumont, The Observer
After four years, eight months and 11 days, after the deaths of unknown thousands of Iraqis, after 174 British fallen, and billions expended on reconstruction and the cost of a military mission, today the British mission in Iraq takes a large step towards being wound up (…) The retreats and drawdowns of the past few months have been hailed by senior British officers as a symbol of their success in establishing a more secure Basra for Iraqi security forces to take over – a line being bought by almost no Iraqis in the province. Instead the city and province that the British occupied when paratroopers and marines marched into the city centre of Basra on 6 April, 2003, have traced a slow, bloody and fractious decline. The struggles between the different political factions within the city for control of hospital wards and university campuses, for the police and for local government, led to kidnapping, intimidation and assassination, and turned at the end into Shia-on-Shia factional warfare in which ordinary Iraqis were caught in the middle. Yesterday British officers stuck to their line. Major Mike Shearer said attacks had dropped dramatically since September as a result of the move. Attacks on British troops, he largely meant. No one denies that the city and the province that the British are handing over is plagued by violence between militias and criminal gangs. Or that women are murdered with impunity for not wearing the hijab…

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Pro Torture GOP Protects Bush, Blocks Torture Ban, Supports Bush Torture Policies
Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy
The GOP blocks passage of a bill that would have banned torture outright even as Bush had threatened to veto it. Bush and his criminal conspirators —the GOP leadership in Congress —have thus worked mightily to cover up his crimes, obstruct justice and make legal —ex post facto —the crimes that Bush has already committed. But that’s not all. The GOP is moving to quash an investigation of Bush that will involve “obstruction of justice”, an investigation that one hopes would end in Bush’s impeachment, removal, arrest and trial for war crimes….

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UN: Siege on Gaza heralds disastrous consequences
Palestinian Information Center
The UN has warned that the Israeli occupation authority’s siege on the Gaza Strip since mid June could inflict irreparable damage to the Strip’s economy. The warning follows a similar one by WHO in which it said that the 392 square kilometer Strip with 1.5 million inhabitants, the highest demographic density in the world, was heading towards a health disaster due to the Israeli siege. The UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs said in a report that the isolation of the Strip for the past six months was threatening irreversible damage to the Palestinian economy and would make the Gaza population more dependable on foreign assistance….

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OFFICIAL STATEMENT OF THE SOLIDARY NETWORK AGAINST THE OCCUPATION OF PALESTINE ANNOUNCING ITS WITHDRAWAL FROM THE FORUM FOR A JUST PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST
Solidarity Network Against the Occupation of Palestine
The Solidarity Network Against the Occupation of Palestine, which gathered in Alcorcón, Madrid, 14 December 2007 and in Leganés, Madrid, 15 December 2007, to participate in the Forum for a Just Peace in the Middle East, has decided to withdraw from the Forum and to suspend all the activities it had organized for the following reasons: Since the beginning of the Forum, our Network voiced its concern over the lack of transparency and the way in which the Forum was developing. The Network considers that governments are obliged to respect and comply with international law and work towards a just peace for the Arab world, the end of all foreign occupation and colonial wars, instead of the manipulation of Forums proposed and developed by civil society….

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Turkey bombs northern Iraq: Iraq officials
Sherko Raouf, Reuters
Turkish warplanes targeting Kurdish rebels bombed villages deep in northern Iraq on Sunday, killing one woman and forcing hundreds of people to flee their homes, local officials said. In Ankara, the Turkish military’s General Staff said in a statement its warplanes had attacked targets of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which uses northern Iraq as a base from which to attack security forces inside Turkey. Private broadcaster CNN Turk quoted unnamed Turkish military sources denying that Iraqi villages had been targeted….

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Syrian oil minister says Syria-Iraq pipeline will reopen within 2 years
The Associated Press
A pipeline linking Iraq’s northern oil fields with Syria’s Mediterranean coastline will be operational within two years but needs repairs in Iraq, Syria’s oil minister said Sunday after meeting with a visiting Iraqi delegation. Syrian Oil Minister Sufian Allaw said a Russian company would travel to Iraq on Jan. 10 to inspect the pipeline for needed repairs. “It’s ready to pump oil from the Syrian side, but the pipeline still needs some repair from the Iraqi side,” Allaw said during a visit by a delegation led by Iraq’s Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh…

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Hamas holds PA security apparatuses responsible for kidnappings waged by IOF
Palestinian Information Center
Hamas held the PA security apparatuses directly responsible for the fierce campaign of kidnappings waged by the IOF troops at dawn Sunday against a large number of Hamas leaders and cadres in Nablus atop of them was MP Ahmed Al-Haj, Ahmed Dawlah and members of the Nablus municipality. In a statement received by the PIC, Hamas confirmed on Sunday that this fierce campaign was waged in the context of security coordination between Fatah-affiliated security apparatuses and Israeli occupation, where the former always provides Israel with information about the movement and places of Hamas leaders and cadres in the West Bank….

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‘This village will be erased’
Gideon Levy, Haaretz
The shattered marble panels of the Hashalom factory, some of which were designated for the kitchens of settlers, testify like a thousand witnesses to the events of the night of revenge. The weeping of Naama Masalha, who had to hide with her young children in the bathroom while the settlers smashed the windows of their house, also tells the story of that night of horror. In the small village of Al Funduq on the Qalqilyah-Nablus road, where Israelis, mainly settlers living in the area, still repair their cars and go shopping, they are now licking their wounds and assessing the damage…

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Surveys give valuable data on plight of Iraqi refugees
UNHCR
Three recent studies of the hundreds of the thousands of Iraqi refugees in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan give humanitarian aid workers a clearer picture of their needs and concerns, including lack of funds, stress, medical problems and fear of arrest. In Syria, the UN refugee agency and the Ipsos market research group have just finished a second round of research – a follow up to a survey in May. A total of 754 families, comprising 3,553 people, were surveyed. “The results show that Iraqi refugees are running out of financial resources – 33 percent say their financial resources will last for three months or less, while 24 percent are relying on remittances from family abroad to survive,” UNHCR spokesperson, Jennifer Pagonis, told journalists in Geneva on Friday…

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Palestinian NGOs pull plug on Madrid forum
Report, The Electronic Intifada
A major meeting of non-governmental organizations and activists fell into disarray when the Palestinian delegation announced its withdrawal just days before the event. “The Palestinian civil society delegation to the forum for a Just Peace in the Middle East, planned for 14-16 December in Madrid, has decided not to participate in the forum due to serious last-minute violations,” a December 13 statement issued by the Palestinian NGO network (PNGO) read. According to the statement, an Israeli establishment delegation was imposed on the forum under pressure from the Spanish government bypassing the forum’s international organizing committee. An Israeli civil society delegation, led by the Alternative Information Center (AIC), also withdrew, as did delegations from the occupied Golan Heights, Lebanon and the Basque region…

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Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Saturday, 15 December 2007.
Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice. www.freearabvoice.org
In a dispatch posted at 4:40pm Baghdad time Saturday afternoon, the Yaqen News Agency reported that the US military admitted Saturday that one of its occupation soldiers had died of small arms fire somewhere in Ninwa Province in northern Iraq on Friday. Yaqen reported that the American statement, in keeping with the US policy of concealing facts regarding American losses in Iraq, failed to provide any further details of the circumstances surrounding the American’s death…

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GI Special 5L11: Combat Refusal Iraq [ December 15, 2007 ]
Thomas F. Barton
Combat Refusal Iraq: “Not Us. We’re Not Going”
“A Revolt In The Ranks”
“No Judicial Action Ever Came Of It”
“We — What Was Left Of The Platoon — Got To Come Back Home Alive”
Though their commanders moved them from the combat outpost to safer quarters, members of 2nd Platoon would stage a revolt they viewed as a life-or-death act of defiance.

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Strangling Gazaby
César Chelala, CommonDreams.org
It could, rightfully, be a cause of shame to the world. But the world, besieged by violence and injustice, hardly notices it. The people of Gaza, 1.4 million of them, are slowly and purposely being deprived of basic foods and medicines by the so called civilized countries in the West and there is hardly a protest. And all this happens because the people in Gaza want to be free and independent. Never mind that in the process children and innocent civilians are killed or families dispossessed. Dr. Mona Elfarra, a Palestinian physician and human rights activist, thus describes a situation in her personal blog, “I don’t know exactly what was going on inside the little heads of the kids who were preparatory school children, of Al Buriege boy’s preparatory school….

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LINGUISTIC TERRORISM
Malcom Lagauche
…We have seen ridiculous measures taken by U.S. politicians in attempting to cleanse the U.S. of non-English speakers: * U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) introduced legislation that the U.S. national anthem be sung only in English. Alexander alleged that there have been 389 versions of the U.S. national anthem in differing musical styles, but a recent Spanish-language version was the first not to be in English. (I wonder how he came up with the figure of 389.) * The U.S. Senate passed two resolutions advocating the exclusivity of the English language in the U.S. It voted 63-34 to make English the national U.S. language. Later, it voted 58-39 to make English the country’s “common and unifying language.” * The legislature of the State of Michigan voted 73-32 to make English the official language of the state. Currently, in Michigan, the state driver’s exam is offered in 20 languages. The new legislation, if passed by the state senate, would enable Michigan to offer it only in English. This recent surge in “English only” is nothing more than a bigoted response to immigrants living in the U.S. It has absolutely no merit and its results could be devastating as the millions of immigrants in the U.S. fall further behind in assimilating to U.S. culture….

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Surprise! Mukasey Covers Up Torture
Robert Parry, consortiumnews.com
Last month, Democratic Sens. Charles Schumer of New York and Dianne Feinstein of California joined Republicans to ensure Michael Mukasey’s confirmation as Attorney General, even though he refused to acknowledge that the simulated drowning of waterboarding was torture. Senate Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada helped the Bush administration, too, by rushing a floor vote on Mukasey before rank-and-file Democrats could get organized and push for a filibuster. To show thanks, Mukasey now is slapping the Democratic-controlled Congress in the face by demanding it back off any oversight investigations into how and why the CIA in late 2005 destroyed videotapes of the waterboarding of al-Qaeda suspects.

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Hamas rally draws tens of thousands
Aljazeera.net
Hamas has marked 20 years since it was founded with a huge rally in Gaza City, attended by what was estimated to be a crowd of between 150,000 and 300,000 supporters. Saturday’s rally was the biggest show of support for the movement since it took control of the Gaza Strip in June. Hamas was created in Gaza in December 1987, from an offshoot of the Gaza wing of the Muslim Brotherhood. Its leaders issued a defiant message at the rally saying they would never recognise Israel, which has cut all but essential humanitarian supplies to the territory. In a message to Hamas TV broadcast at the rally, Khaled Mashaal, the movement’s leader in exile, warned Israel: “Our people are able to launch a third and fourth intifada until the dawn of victory arrives.”…

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Saturday: 1 US Soldier, 32 Iraqis Killed; 43 Iraqis Wounded
Margaret Griffis, Antiwar.com
At least 32 Iraqis were killed and 43 more were wounded on a day heavy with small attacks. Many of these attacks involved Awakening Council (Sahwa) patrolmen in several cities. These Awakening Councils began working with Coalition forces several months ago. Also, an MND-B soldier was killed in Ninewah province during a small arms attack yesterday. In Baghdad, gunmen attacked an Awakening Council headquarters in Adhamiya, killing two patrolmen and wounding 10 others. In Doura, gunmen wounded three patrolmen at a checkpoint. In a third incident involving neighborhood patrols, gunmen killed a patrolman and wounded five others….

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