Chinese Media Ignores Olympic Protests – TIBET – WITH ASSOCIATED ARTICLES
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Foreigners in Tibet: Western media reports not conform with facts
Special report: Dalai clique's separatist activities condemned
·"Many reports were not accurate," said Tony Gleason.
·"The protests were by no means peaceful," Gleason said.
·"I never saw police open fire to the mobsters," he added.
LHASA, March 24 (Xinhua) -- While some Western media rashly accuse China of "violent crackdown" on the "peaceful protests" in Tibet, some foreigners there disagreed.
"Many reports were not accurate," said Tony Gleason, field director of Tibet Poverty Alleviation Fund, an American organization which helps poor Tibetans through skill training and small sum of financing.
Surfing the Internet in his hotel, Gleason saw the Western reports on the incidents in Tibet. In some reports, the riot was described as "peaceful" and "unarmed" demonstration cracked down by the Chinese government.
"The protests were by no means peaceful," Gleason said.
He recalled that he was dining at the Snowland Restaurant with his wife and one-year-old daughter on March 14 when a large group of mobsters threw bricks and hand-sized rocks at cars on the street.
"I saw black smoke from the center of the city, and there was more smoke from different parts," he said at the Gajilin Hotel where he lives and works.
"I never saw police open fire to the mobsters," he added.
Ursula Rechbach, from Slovenia, has worked more than eight years for the Lhasa-based Project for Strengthening the Tibetan Traditional Medicine.
The lady in her 50s said she was having lunch with her colleagues on March 14, when the riot started. Her Tibetan colleagues quickly accompanied her to her hotel.
"We hardly made it," Ursula said of the terrible day, adding she saw from the roof of her hotel that young people in late teens holding long sticks and stones in their hands, screaming, turning over cars, setting cars on fire, and smashing and looting shops.
She later spoke to a few other foreigners in Tibet. Based on what they had seen, they agreed that the riot must have been organized. "You can't have it all of a sudden. It can be (happening) in one place, if it is not organized. It must be premeditated, at least prepared," she said.
Commenting on some Western media accusing China of "massacring Tibetans" in their "peaceful protest", Ursula said, "You can invent some stories in order to sell better, but how can you accuse anybody if you were not there," she said.
Guzman Escardo, who works with the Association for International Solidarity in Asia (ASIA), told Xinhua that the local police had been extremely polite, contrary to what the Western media presumed.
"The police on the streets are kind and polite. They always smile at me," he said.
Escardo said he watched channel nine of China Central Television (CCTV) and the Spanish TV to see what was going on.
"The local government often contacts us to make sure I am safe. They take a lot care of me," he said. "I feel safe at the hotel."
Aside from foreigners in Tibet, tens of thousands of Chinese netizens have lashed out at a number of Western media for distorting facts in covering the riot in Lhasa.
According to the netizens, German newspaper Berlin Morningpost posted a picture on its website in which police in Lhasa rescued a young man of Han nationality assaulted by rioters. But the caption said "insurrectionist taken away by police".
In a similar case, N-TV, headquartered in Germany, was accused of using TV footage showing police with captured protestors in a report on the Tibet riot. The footage had been shot in Nepal, and the police were Nepalese.
The N-TV said on March 23 that it would check the authenticity of the TV footage, following Germany's RTL television which on the same day said that it "regretted an error" in covering the riot in Lhasa.
The RTL TV admitted that it had reported the riots with a picture taken on March 17 in the capital city of Kathmandu, where Nepalese security forces were confronting demonstrators with batons.
German news television regrets error in covering Tibet riots
N-TV, headquartered in Germany, used TV footage showing police with captured protestors in a report on the Tibet riots. The footage had been shot in Nepal, the police were Nepalese.Photo Gallery>>>
BERLIN, March 23 (Xinhua) -- Germany's RTL television said on Sunday that it "regrets an error" in covering the riots in Lhasa, capital city of China's Tibet Autonomous Region.
The TV station admitted on its website that it "used a picture in a wrong context." Full text
German media apologize for errors in covering Tibet riots
BERLIN, March 24 (Xinhua) -- Two German news organizations have apologized after being accused of distorting facts in covering the riots in Lhasa, capital city of China's Tibet Autonomous Region.
German news television N-TV on Monday admitted that a picture and a video sequence it used on March 20 in a report about the riots in Tibet had actually been taken in Nepal, a neighboring country of China. Full text
Netizens slam CNN's distortion of riot picture
A CNN website picture shows people running in front of a military truck. The original picture uploaded by Chinese netizens, however, actually also shows mobsters throwing stones at the truck.Photo Gallery>>>
BEIJING, March 23 (Xinhua) -- Tens of thousands of netizens have answered calls to condemn CNN and a few other western media organizations for distorting facts in covering the riot in Lhasa, capital city of China's Tibet Autonomous Region.
"The fairness and objectivity of CNN is cropped," said one of the postings at the online forum of www.china.com., referring to a CNN website picture showing people running in front of a military truck. The original picture uploaded by Chinese netizens, however, actually also shows mobsters throwing stones at the truck. Full text
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The New York Times
March 25, 2008
Chinese Media Ignores Olympic Protests
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 5:50 a.m. ET
BEIJING (AP) -- According to the state-run media, anti-Chinese government protests that marred the Olympic torch-lighting ceremony simply didn't happen.
State-controlled Chinese media did not mention the embarrassing disruption, which took place Monday in Greece when a protester evaded security and ran up behind Beijing Olympic organizing committee President Liu Qi as he was giving a speech.
The image and the report of the protester unfurling a black banner -- the Olympic rings replaced by handcuffs -- appeared around the world in newspapers, on Web sites and on television broadcasts.
But not in China.
The domestic censorship comes as China tries to avoid a public relations disaster abroad.
The torch relay and the Olympics were supposed to feature a modern China. Instead, the intense coverage of Beijing preparations has become a stage for protests by pro-Tibet activists, and human rights and religious groups.
The games have also highlighted Beijing's choking pollution, tensions over Taiwan and issues with a Muslim minority in the west of the country.
The English-language China Daily published at least eight articles about the torch-lighting without mentioning the disruption. It also ignored the protest of a Tibetan woman who lay in the road of the torch relay until she was removed by police.
''A perfect start on the road to gold,'' the newspaper said in a headline.
''The Olympic flame will radiate light and happiness, peace and friendship, and the hope and dreams of the people of China and the whole world,'' it said, quoting Liu's speech. Liu is also the head of Beijing's Communist Party.
While ignoring the protests, the paper carried a front-page article accusing some media of ''distorted and sometimes dishonest'' coverage of recent riots in Tibet.
The Chinese-language People's Daily, the main voice of the Communist Party, filled half of its front page and all of its sports page with reports of the torch lighting. There was no mention of protests.
The powerful Guangming Daily carried reports from the state-run Xinhua news agency.
''People in Tibet are looking forward to the Olympic Games,'' one headline said.
''The whole country's attention and enthusiasm for the ceremony showed the world that the Chinese people's passion aroused by the Olympic flame is far beyond sports,'' an article said.
TV also ignored the protests. China state-run TV cut away just before the protests on Monday and showed a prerecorded scene, preventing Chinese viewers from seeing the incident. Chinese TV commentators didn't mention it. The TV coverage was broadcast with a slight delay, allowing censors to intervene.
International TV broadcasts from CNN and the BBC -- available only to foreigners in apartment compounds or hotels -- were blacked out when they carried scenes of the protest.
Unnerved by the threat of live TV broadcasts, China might bar live television broadcasts from Tiananmen Square during the Beijing Olympics. Any ban would upset international TV networks, who have paid hundreds of millions of dollars to broadcast the games.
Foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang called the protests ''shameful and unpopular.''
''We believe that China has the confidence and capability to ensure a smooth Olympic torch relay and a successful Olympic Games,'' said Qin, who tacitly acknowledged the protests took place.
A half-dozen Chinese interviewed on the streets Tuesday said they didn't know about the protests.
''It's not something we should care about,'' said a migrant worker collecting garbage, who identified himself as Mr. Zhang. Migrant workers earn about $150 monthly and tens of thousands have been at work in Beijing building the city's new Olympic venues and airport terminal.
''We're not even quite sure we can still stay in this city when Olympic come,'' Zhang added.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press
Riots in Lhasa
19:26, March 24, 2008
Olympic flame lit in Ancient Olympia
The head priestess, Greece's actress Maria Nafpliotou, raises the torch of Olympic flame during the flame lighting ceremony for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games held in Olympia, Greece, March 24, 2008.
19:09, March 24, 2008
Chinese Luo takes Olympic torch
Athens Olympic champion swimmer Luo Xuejuan of China took the Olympic torch from Greek taekwondo athlete Alexandros Nikolaidis in ancient Olympia on Monday.
Source:Xinhua
Copyright by People's Daily Online, All Rights Reserved
19:10, March 24, 2008
Retired swimmer Luo proud to be first Chinese torchbearer of Beijing Olympics
Luo Xuejuan, formerly dubbed the "Queen in the Pool" before her retirement from swimming last year, felt extremely proud of being the first Chinese to bear the flame of Beijing Olympic Games here on Monday.
"I'm so honored, and feel so challenged also," said Luo, who won the only swimming title for China in Athens four years ago at the women's 100 meters breaststroke event.
"As the first Chinese torchbearer, I deeply know that I'm not bearing it by myself but with all my countrymen," Luo added. The 24-year-old former Olympian will take over the torch from Greek Olympic taekwondo silver medallist Alexandros Nikolaidis, the first torchbearer, after his torch is lit by High Priestess Maria Nafpliotou at the Ancient Olympia archaeological site. Luo did not feel pity to miss the Olympic flame lighting ceremony at Hera Temple since she has to wait the flame heralding its relay on her point.
"I think I would feel the heat of the flame, though I could not see it being lit," she said. "I know the flame will be lit somewhere very near to me, be soon passed to me and from me to elsewhere."
"The Olympic passion of all Chinese will thus be passed all around the Greek soil and around the world," she added. Luo was crowned the world champion at both the women's 50 and 100 meters breaststroke in 2001 and 2003, but announced her retirement in early 2007 due to health problem.
"I've been searching the way of my own to do something for the Olympic Games on home soil beside vying for medals in the grand event as an athlete," said Luo, smiling. "Now I find it." "As a torchbearer, I think the Olympic spirit means pure, fair, competitive, and friendship, passion, peace and harmonious. "Wish the peace of the world," she concluded.
The torch will roam Greece for six days, staying one night each in Mesologi, Ioannina, Vera, Thessaloniki, and Lamia, after which it will reach Athens on March 30.
The last torchbearer, Greece's 2004 Olympic silver medallist in triple jump, Pigi Devetzi, will transport the torch to Panathenian Stadium on March 30, where it will be transferred to the Beijing Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games.
Source:Xinhua
Copyright by People's Daily Online, All Rights Reserved
19:10, March 24, 2008
World athletes hail torch relay as flame lit up
World athletes hailed the torch relay of the Beijing Olympic Games as the flame was lit up in Ancient Olympia and started its international tour on Monday.
The Beijing Olympics flame was lit in an official ceremony at the birthplace of the ancient Olympics.
The ceremony launches the Olympic torch relay that marks the countdown for each Games, and the Beijing Games relay is the longest and most ambitious ever planned, lasting 130 days and covering 137,000 kilometers (85,000 miles) worldwide.
Kosuke Kitajima, Japan's double Olympic breaststroke champion and former world record holder, said he will feel delighted to take part in the torch relay although he has working hard currently in the United States to retain his titles at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
"I never expect to become a torch bearer for the upcoming Olympics, but it is meaningful to inform the arrival of the Olympic flame to the people of the world and increase the awareness for the Olympic movement. I feel so excited to get involved in the torch relay," said Kitajima, who is expected to run in Nagano of Japan segment.
"Now I am competing on a plateau of the USA, and training for 10,00 meters per day," added Kitajima. "I am in 100 percent good form and I can train like eating my breakfast."
At the Athens Olympics in 2004, Kitajima won the 100 and 200 meters golds. In April, he will come back to Japan for the national championships which also serve as qualifiers for the Olympics.
Luo Xuejuan, formerly dubbed the "Queen in the Pool" before her retirement from swimming last year, felt extremely proud of being the first Chinese to bear the flame of Beijing Olympic Games.
"I'm so honored, and feel so challenged also," said Luo, who won the only swimming title for China in Athens four years ago at the women's 100 meters breaststroke event.
"As the first Chinese torchbearer, I deeply know that I'm not bearing it by myself but with all my countrymen," Luo added.
The 24-year-old former Olympian took over the torch from Greek Olympic taekwondo silver medallist Alexandros Nikolaidis, the first torchbearer, after his torch was lit by High Priestess Maria Nafpliotou at the Ancient Olympia archaeological site.
Table tennis legend Deng Yaping, who has run twice in previous Olympics, will also run the torch relay in Greece on behalf of China.
"The torch relay lasts a long time and will get many people involved, so it will have an enormous effect on the world," said Deng, who ran her first torch relay in 2000 Sydney Games.
"Those who don't know much about the Olympics will use the torch relay as an access to it. The torch relay is really a good symbol for the Olympic movement."
Deng, with 18 world and Olympic titles to her belt, is one of the most successful table tennis players in China. After retirement, she became an official of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
Deng noted that the different peoples from different countries can understand each other and enhance the friendship via the torch relay, which is aimed at the world peace.
"The Olympic Games are an arena for top-level athletes, so the torch relay presents a good chance for average people to get involved. In my previous torch relay experiences, I can really feel the charm of the noble movement and the enthusiasm of the torch bearers and the watchers."
The Beijing Olympics, the first to be held in China, will open on August 8 and run until August 24.
Source:Xinhua
Copyright by People's Daily Online, All Rights Reserved
09:03, March 24, 2008
1st torchbearer: Beijing Olympic Games to be big success
As the first torchbearer of this summer's Olympic Games, Greek Olympic taekwondo silver medalist Alexandros Nikolaidis said here Sunday that the Beijing games will be a big success as their preparations are underway smoothly.
Nikolaidis appeared for the first time Sunday in the rehearsals for Monday's flame lighting ceremony of the Beijing Olympiad at Ancient Olympia.
He told reporters he was very honored and excited about being the first torchbearer of the Beijing Olympics. "The Olympic torch will start from here tomorrow to travel around the world," he said.
The 28-year-old Nikolaidis, who took the silver in the 80kg category in the Athens summer Olympics, hoped that this time he would be one step better.
"I'll train hard and fight for the best result in Beijing," he vowed.
The weather, which was dusty in Olympia Sunday morning, could be a concern for Monday's ceremony. Nikolaidis expressed his hope that it could be better tomorrow.
On Monday, at the Ancient Olympia archaeological site, High Priestess Maria Nafpliotou will use a torch ignited by the Olympic Flame to light the torch held by Nikolaidis, who would then hand over the torch to China's swimming Olympic Champion Luo Xuejuan.
The torch will roam Greece for six days. The last torchbearer in Greece, the country's 2004 Olympic silver medalist in triple jump, Pigi Devetzi, will transport the torch to Panathenian Stadium on March 30, where it will be transferred to the organizing committee of the Beijing Olympic Games.
Source: Xinhua
Copyright by People's Daily Online, All Rights Reserved
08:58, March 21, 2008
Foreign nations voice support for China's handling of Lhasa riot
Foreign nations voiced their support for China's legitimate actions to handle the violence in Lhasa in recent days, expressing their opposition to the secessionist activities and the politicization of the Beijing Olympics.
According to a press release issued here Thursday from the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Russian, Belarusian and Vietnamese foreign ministry spokesmen all expressed their support for China's efforts to stop the unlawful activities in an aim to restore local peace and stability and their confidence in China's capability of hosting the Olympic Games.
Pakistani and Mauritania foreign ministries issued statements on Tuesday and Wednesday respectively applauding Beijing's commitment to host the Olympic event, stressing that their countries oppose to any attempts to sabotage or politicize the Beijing Olympics, as well as the conspiracies to undermine China's sovereignty and territory integrity.
Singapore's Minister for Community Development, Youth and Sports Vivian Balakrishnan said, "It is vital to keep sporting competitions and politics separate. We must not let politics obstruct the sports."
On the same day, Lesotho Foreign Minister Mohlabi Kenneth Tsekoa said in his meeting with Chinese ambassador that Lesotho will back China's efforts to safeguard national sovereignty and territory integrity, stressing that the handling of the Lhasa riot was China's internal affairs and no other countries have the right to make irresponsible remarks on the issue.
The press release also said that ambassadors in Beijing from Arabian nations all expressed their shock to the violence that occurred in Lhasa, saying that their countries support China's approaches to safeguard national security and restore social stability, and would continue to adhere to the one-China policy.
On the same day, Indian foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee urged Dalai Lama and his followers to stay away from any political activities.
Cote d'Ivoire's Minister of Foreign Affairs Mohlabi Kenneth Tsekoa and the Republic of Congo (ROC) Foreign Affairs Minister Basile Ikouebe all expressed their firm supports for China and its efforts to hold a successful Olympic Games in Beijing, the press release added.
Source: Xinhua
Copyright by People's Daily Online, All Rights Reserved
09:58, March 22, 2008
Several international Olympic officials voice support for Beijing Olympics
Several chairmen of foreign Olympic Committees have recently voiced support for the Beijing Olympic Games, and opposed the politicization of the grand sports event.
Chairman of Kenya's Olympic Committee Kipchoge Keino told Xinhua that sports shouldn't be used by some people as a political tool. As one of human beings' greatest achievements, the Olympic Games should be a major force to promote world unity, not to create divisions, he said.
"Athletes have prepared for the Olympics for four years and they are looking forward to participating in the Games," Keino said. He hopes all athletes could actively participate in the Olympic Games with the spirit of competing fairly. Boycotting the Olympics or taking similar measures are meaningless, he said.
Stressing that the Tibet issue is part of China's internal affairs, he said he has the confidence that "the Chinese government and people will make all possible efforts to make the Olympics a success."
Romanian Olympic Committee President Octavian Morariu told Romania Libera newspaper on Thursday that he opposed the boycott of the Beijing Olympics, saying "We have no rights to interfere in other countries' political affairs."
Morariu said he is full of confidence that Beijing can host a successful Olympic Games, and the International Olympic Committee has already expressed the same belief, saying the safety of Olympic athletes will be absolutely guaranteed.
Under these circumstances, the idea of boycotting the Beijing Olympics is not even worth considering, he said.
President of Togo's National Olympic Committee Zoumaro Gnofame opposed on Thursday any attempt to politicize sports.
Gnofame made the remarks when meeting with Chinese Charge d'Affaires Shao Wei. He said Togo would unswervingly support the Beijing Olympic Games and send a delegation to the event.
He added that the "Tibet issue" would not affect most countries' passion to participate in the upcoming Olympics.
Latvian Olympic Committee President Aldons Vrublevsk said Thursday the committee firmly opposes any attempt to boycott the Beijing Olympic Games by taking advantage of the so-called "Tibet issue," adding that no such actions would find "common views" among the athletes.
Viktors Scerbatihs, weight-lifting world champion and parliament member of Latvia, said all the athletes are looking forward to participating in the Olympics and any political issues should be dealt with after the Games.
Source: Xinhua
Copyright by People's Daily Online, All Rights Reserved
20:51, March 18, 2008
More countries oppose attempts to politicize Beijing Olympics
More countries and foreign media on Monday made statements on the recent riots in Lhasa, capital city of China's Tibet autonomous region, voicing opposition to attempts to politicize the Beijing Olympic Games by making use of the Tibet issue.
In a statement published on its website, the Russian Foreign Ministry said that Tibet is an integral part of China and Russia hoped that the Chinese side will take all the necessary measures to end illegal actions and secure an early return to normalcy in the autonomous region.
"Attempts to politicize the conduct of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in China are unacceptable," the statement stressed.
The EU sports ministers and Olympic committees strongly opposed a boycott of the Beijing Olympics over the Tibet issue. Slovene Sports Minister Milan Zver, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, said that sport is still an instrument for inter-cultural dialogue.
Togay Bayatli, a member of the European Olympic Committees, said it is the athletes that lose out in cases of boycotts and other political actions.
"Tibet is an inalienable part of the Chinese territory. Issues of Tibet are totally internal affairs of China," Pakistani Foreign Office spokesman Muhammad Sadiq said. He noted that the Pakistani government is firmly opposed to any attempt to undermine China's sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Malaysia's Nanyang Siang Pau newspaper said that the separatists in Tibet attempted to instigate the riots in Lhasa to politicize the Beijing Olympics. As for the issue of Tibet and the Dalai clique, the stance of the Chinese government has always been firm and clear: the Dalai Lama is not purely a religious figure, but a political figure in exile, who has engaged in separatist activities for a long time.
Japanese Vice Foreign Minister Mitoji Yabunaka said the unrest in Tibet will not affect the planned visit to Japan by Chinese President Hu Jintao this spring.
Latvian Foreign Minister Maris Riekstins said that Tibet is one part of the Chinese territory and the recent riot in Lhasa undermined the social stability in China.
In a statement, the Council for the Promotion of China's Peaceful Reunification in New Zealand slashed out the violence involving beating, smashing property, looting and arson in Lhasa.
It said Tibet is an inalienable part of the Chinese territory and it is absolutely impossible for the Dalai clique to separate Tibet from China.
Source: Xinhua
Copyright by People's Daily Online, All Rights Reserved
07:47, March 25, 2008
Expert: Lhasa riot reveals hypocritical features of Dalai clique
The recent riots in Lhasa, capital of China's Tibet Autonomous Region, and some other ethnic Tibetan areas revealed the hypocritical features of the Dalai clique, according to an expert on Tibetan studies.
The Dalai clique always claim that they would resort to "peaceful" and "non-violent" means to solve problems, but the recent riots only proves these claims are hypocritical, Monday's Guangming Daily reported, quoting Chen Qingying, a researcher from Institute of History under the China Tibetology Research Center.
The coincidence of recent riots in Lhasa and other ethnic Tibetan areas has proved the existence of a plot by the supporters of the Dalai Lama -- to seek "Tibet independence" at all costs, said Chen who has compiled a 10-volume General History of Tibet with other scholars.
"To realize their political ambition, they would not scruple to resort to violence," Chen was quoted as saying.
The fact the Dalai Lama and his supporters chose to create turmoil in Tibet and other areas ahead of the Olympics and make innocent people victims of riots shows that their "peaceful" and "non-violent" means are merely lies, he said.
Source:Xinhua
Copyright by People's Daily Online, All Rights Reserved
07:46, March 25, 2008
381 rioters in Aba county surrender to police
A total of 381 people involved in the riots in Aba county of Sichuan Province have surrendered themselves to the police as of Monday noon, according to local authorities.
Law enforcement authorities of the Tibetan county issued a notice last Wednesday, urging those who had taken part in the riots on March 16 to submit themselves within ten days.
"Among those surrendered, most are common people or monks deceived or coerced," said Shu Tao, chief of the Communist Party committee of a village where 40 people gave themselves in on Monday morning, following the 23 monks who surrendered on Sunday.
Riots in the Aba county erupted on the heels of the Lhasa unrest. Violent mobs, some shouting "Tibet independence" slogans and holding flags of the so-called "Tibetan government-in-exile", stormed into and attacked government offices, police stations, hospitals, schools and banks.
Total losses remained unknown yet.
Aba county, under the Aba Tibetan-Qiang Autonomous Prefecture with a population of 63,000, The county town is about 200 km from Sichuan's provincial capital of Chengdu.
Source:Xinhua
Copyright by People's Daily Online, All Rights Reserved
Published on ShanghaiDaily.com (http://www.shanghaidaily.com/)
http://www.shanghaidaily.com/sp/article/2008/200803/20080325/article_353402.htm
Five confess over Lhasa deaths
Created: 2008-3-25 1:37:12
FIVE suspects have been detained over two arson attacks in which 10 people died during the Lhasa riots and have confessed, an official with the Ministry of Public Security said in Beijing yesterday.
Ministry spokesperson Shan Huimin briefed the public on the two arson cases at a press conference.
Three suspects have been detained over an arson attack at a shop named Yishion at 2:30pm on March 14 in which five female sales assistants were burnt to death.
In another case, two people were detained over an arson attack in a motorbike shop about 10pm on March 15, which caused the deaths of five victims including an eight-month old boy and his parents.
Lhasa erupted on March 14 when rioters set fire to and looted public facilities, buildings and shops. A total of 242 police officers have been injured, according to Shan.
Facts prove the March 14 riot was by no means a "peaceful demonstration" and "peaceful protest," but a severe and violent criminal incident.
The sabotage was well-organized, premeditated and an outcome of overseas forces instigating domestic separatists to resort to violence, he said.
Their ulterior motive was to disturb the Beijing Olympic Games, destroy peace and stability and split the country, Shan said. The whole nation is indignant and fiercely denounces the violence.
The suspects in the March 14 fire, young women, set fire to the remaining clothes after the store had already been looted, Shan said.
One suspect Ben'gyi, 21, used a lighter to ignite jeans, another suspect, also named Ben'gyi, 23, set fire to other clothes, while Qime Lhazom, 20, threw clothes on the fire.
The five victims, all in their 20s, were hiding in the shop.
Shan said the two male suspects involved in March 15 case are Loyar, 25 and Kangzug, 22. At 10pm, Loyar threw stones at shops, attacking police and setting fire to a grain shop named Minhe. He later joined Kangzug to break into and set fire to the motorbike shop.
Loyar went to a food shop next door and threw two liquid gas jars into the motorcycle shop, which caused the deaths of five victims hiding in a room on the second floor.
Shan said that the five suspects have confessed their guilt after initial investigation.
Xinhua
Copyright © 2001-2007 Shanghai Daily Publishing House
Published on ShanghaiDaily.com (http://www.shanghaidaily.com/)
http://www.shanghaidaily.com/sp/article/2008/200803/20080325/article_353404.htm
China's gold medal-winning swimmer, Luo Xuejuan, carries the Olympic flame on the first relay after the Olympic flame-lighting ceremony in Greece yesterday. –Mal Langsdon
China's gold medal-winning swimmer, Luo Xuejuan, carries the Olympic flame on the first relay after the Olympic flame-lighting ceremony in Greece yesterday. –Mal Langsdon
Greek actress Maria Nafpliotou, playing the role of a high priestess, holds up the Olympic flame near the Temple of Hera in Ancient Olympia where the Olympics were born in 776 B.C. during the flame lighting ceremony yesterday. The flame will be handed over to the Beijing Olympic Committee on Sunday at the stadium in Athens where the first modern Games were held in 1896.
Games flame flares: Let the journey begin
Created: 2008-3-25 1:38:11
Author:Lydia Chen
THE flame for the Beijing Olympics was lit in Olympia, Greece, at 11:45am local time (5:45pm Beijing time) yesterday, marking the start of the longest torch relay in the Games history.
The lighting ceremony fittingly occurred near the Temple of Hera in Ancient Olympia, where the Olympics were born in 776BC. Greek actresses in white gowns and sandals circled the lighting altar while "high priestess" Maria Nafpliotou offered a prayer to the ancient sun god Apollo before kindling the torch with sun rays among the ruins of the ancient games' birthplace at 11:45am.
Male dancers performed an ancient routine and held up olive wreaths to form the Olympic circles. They then escorted Nafpliotou and the flame to the entrance of the Olympia Amphitheater where she lit the torch for the first torchbearer Alexandros Nikolaidis, who won a silver medal for taekwondo at the 2004 Athens Games, and passed an olive branch to him.
Nikolaidis then ran across the amphitheater to head for the cemetery of Pierre de Coubertin (1863-1937), the father of the modern Olympic Games. His run started a 1,528-kilometer-long torch relay journey that involves 645 runners in Greece.
The flame will be handed over to the Beijing Olympics Committee on Sunday at the stadium in Athens where the first modern Games were held in 1896. The relay is scheduled to start in Beijing and then wind across Asia, Europe, the Americas, Africa and Oceania, then back to Asia and China before the torch ignites the cauldron at the opening ceremony on August 8 in Beijing's 91,000-seat National Stadium.
The journey will cover 137,000 kilometers, the longest torch run in history, last 130 days and involve 22,000 torch-bearers around the world.
The ceremony was attended by the Mayor of Olympia, International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge, the President of Greece's Olympic Committee and Liu Qi, the president of the Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee.
"Today will lead to the opening of the first ever Olympic Games in China, where one fifth of the world's population is longing for them," said Rogge.
"By crossing five continents and visiting 21 cities throughout the world, and more than 100 cities in China, the 2008 Olympic Torch Relay prepares the way to Beijing," he said.
Liu said: "The Olympic flame will radiate light and happiness, peace and friendship, and hope and dreams to the people of China and the whole world. Its rays will light up the starry skies during the Beijing Olympic Games."
Copyright © 2001-2007 Shanghai Daily Publishing House
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Tibetan Lawmakers add voices to condemnation against riot in Lhasa
BEIJING, March 16 (Xinhua) -- Tibetan lawmakers attending the National People's Congress here in Beijing joined Tibetan Buddhist leaders and local Tibetans in condemnation against riotous activities in Lhasa which took away the peace in the plateau city.
Purbu, deputy to the National People's Congress, said he was "shocked and very much saddened" upon learning what happened in his hometown.
"I spoke to my wife over the phone. She was taking care of her ill mother in a hospital when the riot broke out on Friday. She didn't dare to go back home until Sunday morning," he said.
"The lives of the Tibetan people are getting better by the day. We can't afford any more disturbances," said the man, who lived 56 years in the city.
Another lawmaker Saizhoi, deputy head of a farming institute in Lhasa, said her fellow Tibetans needed solidarity, peace and better lives, and "the riotous sabotage was definitely not what the 2.8 million people in Tibet wanted to see".
"It was a only bunch of ill-disposed people attempting a stir," she said, "I talked to my family over the phone, and they told me things fortunately have calmed down now at present."
The 11th Panchen Lama Gyaincain Norbu condemned the lawless riot in Lhasa, saying the sabotage acts run counter to the Buddhism tenets.
"The rioters' acts not only harmed the interests of the nation and the people, but also violated the aim of Buddhism," Panchen said.
An outburst of violence on Friday, which Tibetan regional government says was engineered by Dalai clique, has claimed the lives of 10 civilians and caused many injuries.
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China expects India to handle Tibet issue in line with agreements
Special report: Dalai's separatist activities condemned
BEIJING, March 18 (Xinhua) -- China expects the Indian government to handle Tibet issue in line with the agreements reached by two sides, said Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao here Tuesday.
China appreciates the position taken by the Indian government to handle the "Tibet independence" activities schemed by the Dalai clique, said the premier at a press conference after China's parliament ended its annual full session.
Tibet issue is sensitive in China-India relations but the two sides have reached broad agreements, he said. "I hope the Indian government can follow the agreements reached between the two countries and handle this issue in a correct way."
Asked about the border issue between China and India, the premier said, "This complex issue left from the past can not be expected to be resolved overnight."
New progress in the negotiation of addressing the border issue will be made as long as the two sides show sincerity and work on the principle of treating each other equally and making mutual accommodation, he said.
China and India set political parameters and guiding principles on the border issue in 2005, and 11 rounds of talks had been held as of September last year.
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chinaviewLatest NewsGovernmentOn the SceneBiased Reporting SlammedCommentsWorld ReactionsReports
German TV regrets error in riots report
Photos
Photos reveal facts of Tibet riot
Chinese overseas missions undergo violent attacks
German media apologize for errors in covering Tibet riots
Two German news organizations have apologized after being accused of distorting facts in covering the riots in Lhasa, capital city of China's Tibet Autonomous Region.
Foreigners in Tibet: Western media reports not conform with facts
While some Western media rashly accuse China of "violent crackdown" on the "peaceful protests" in Tibet, some foreigners there disagreed.
Expert: Lhasa riot reveals hypocritical features of Dalai clique
The recent riots in Lhasa and some other ethnic Tibetan areas revealed the hypocritical features of the Dalai clique, according to an expert on Tibetan studies.
Five criminal suspects detained for setting fire in Lhasa riot
Five criminal suspects have been detained over two arson attacks in which 10 people died during the Lhasa riots and have confessed their guilt, said an official with the Chinese Ministry of Public Security here Monday.
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Foreign residents condemn riots
Five suspects arrested in Lhasa
Religious figures condemn Lhasa riots
Gannan police step up investigation
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Backgrounder: Historical facts of Tibet
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Renovation of Potala, Norbu Lingka palaces resumes in Tibet
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German media apologize for errors in covering Tibet riots
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Foreigners in Tibet: Western media reports not conform with facts
·
Chinese State Councillor visits Tibet
·
Tibetan mountaineers vow all-out efforts for safe Olympic torch relay
·
NW China living Buddha condemns riots in Tibetan-inhabited areas
·
FM: China's principle on dialogue with Dalai Lama unchanged
On The Scene
Biased Reporting Slammed
·
Amercian poverty relief worker: Mobs take away peace in Lhasa
·
Canadian tourists tell of atrocities by rioters in Lhasa
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Western tourists recount riots in Lhasa
·
Photos reveal facts of Tibet riot
·
Foreigners in Tibet: Western media reports not conform with facts
·
Chinese experts condemn biased reports on Lhasa riot by western media
·
Commentary: Facts about Tibet should not be distorted
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German news television regrets error in covering Tibet riots
Comments
World Reactions
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Expert: Lhasa riot reveals hypocritical features of Dalai clique
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Commentary: Don't disturb the Olympics
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Commentary: Facts about Tibet should not be distorted
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Double standards challenge U.S. Speaker's own conscience
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Foreigners in Tibet: Western media reports not conform with facts
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More international support for China's handling of Lhasa riots
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FM: India clarifies rumor of meeting Dalai
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Int'l community supports China's handling of Lhasa riots
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Beijing 2008 Olympics
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Tuesday, March 25, 2008
PRISONS - Consensus on Counting the Innocent: We Can't - USA
PRISONS - Consensus on Counting the Innocent: We Can’t - USA
The New York Times
March 25, 2008
Sidebar
Consensus on Counting the Innocent: We Can’t
By ADAM LIPTAK
A couple of years ago, Justice Antonin Scalia, concurring in a Supreme Court death penalty decision, took stock of the American criminal justice system and pronounced himself satisfied. The rate at which innocent people are convicted of felonies is, he said, less than three-hundredths of 1 percent — .027 percent, to be exact.
That rate, he said, is acceptable. “One cannot have a system of criminal punishment without accepting the possibility that someone will be punished mistakenly,” he wrote. “That is a truism, not a revelation.”
But there is reason to question Justice Scalia’s math. He had, citing the methodology of an Oregon prosecutor, divided an estimate of the number of exonerated prisoners, almost all of them in murder and rape cases, by the total of all felony convictions.
“By this logic,” Samuel R. Gross, a law professor at the University of Michigan, wrote in a response to be published in this year’s Annual Review of Law and Social Science, “we could estimate the proportion of baseball players who’ve used steroids by dividing the number of major league players who’ve been caught by the total of all baseball players at all levels: major league, minor league, semipro, college and Little League — and maybe throwing in football and basketball players as well.”
Joshua Marquis, the Oregon prosecutor cited by Justice Scalia, granted the logic of Professor Gross’s critique but not his conclusion.
“He correctly points out,” Mr. Marquis, the district attorney in Clatsop County, Ore., said of Professor Gross, “that rape and murders are only a small percentage of all crimes, but then has absolutely no real data to suggest there are epidemic false convictions in, say, burglary cases.”
What the debate demonstrates is that we know almost nothing about the number of innocent people in prison. That is because any effort to estimate it involves extrapolation from just two numbers, neither one satisfactory.
There have been 214 exonerations based on DNA evidence, almost all of them in rape cases, according to the Innocence Project at the Cardozo School of Law. But there is no obvious control group to measure these exonerations against.
Virginia, though, has discovered thousands of closed rape files from 1973 through 1988, many with untested biological evidence. DNA testing of a preliminary sample of 31 of them yielded two wrongful convictions. Those numbers are too small to be reliable, of course, but they would suggest a false conviction rate of 6 percent.
Even that rate may be low, said Shawn Armbrust, the executive director of the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project. Ms. Armbrust said investigators in Virginia were able to get results in only 22 of the 31 tests, suggesting a false conviction rate of 9 percent.
The other important number comes from death row. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, 127 death row inmates have been exonerated.
Here we do have a control group. There have been more than 7,000 death sentences since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.
But exoneration in the capital context is a funny concept. It suggests complete vindication, but its real meaning is generally narrower.
DNA evidence in a rape case can provide something like categorical proof of innocence. Death row exonerations, on the other hand, can be based on all sorts of things, like, say, prosecutorial misconduct. In other words, it is possible to wrongfully convict a guilty defendant.
Mr. Marquis, the Oregon prosecutor cited by Justice Scalia, says the number of authentic death row exonerations is more like 30. Many people exonerated in the legal sense, he said, in fact committed the crime but could not be proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
Professor Gross thinks the number of guilty people released from death row is very small.
Professor Gross concluded that the false conviction rate for death row inmates has ranged from 2.3 percent to 5 percent. Were even the lower end of that range applied to people who received prison sentences of a year or more in the last three decades, he wrote, it would suggest that about 185,000 innocent people have served hard time.
But extrapolating from capital crimes to felonies generally is problematic whatever the number of exonerations.
On the one hand, there is some reason to think that homicide cases yield what Justice David H. Souter, dissenting in that same death penalty decision two years ago, called “an unusually high incidence of false conviction, probably owing to the combined difficulty of investigating without help from the victim, intense pressure to get convictions in homicide cases and the corresponding incentive for the guilty to frame the innocent.”
On the other, as Justice Scalia responded, capital cases “are given especially close scrutiny at every level.”
We are left with an uneasy agreement between Professor Gross and Mr. Marquis on at least one point. “Once we move beyond murder and rape cases,” Professor Gross wrote, “we know very little about any aspect of false conviction.”
But a few general lessons can be drawn nonetheless. Black men are more likely to be falsely convicted of rape than are white men, particularly if the victim is white. Juveniles are more likely to confess falsely to murder. Exonerated defendants are less likely to have serious criminal records. People who maintain their innocence are more likely to be innocent. The longer it takes to solve a crime, the more likely the defendant is not guilty.
Justice Scalia, for his part, focused on what he saw as good news. “Reversal of an erroneous conviction,” he wrote, “demonstrates not the failure of the system but its success.”
Online: Documents and an archive of Adam Liptak’s articles: nytimes.com/adamliptak.
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
The New York Times
March 25, 2008
Sidebar
Consensus on Counting the Innocent: We Can’t
By ADAM LIPTAK
A couple of years ago, Justice Antonin Scalia, concurring in a Supreme Court death penalty decision, took stock of the American criminal justice system and pronounced himself satisfied. The rate at which innocent people are convicted of felonies is, he said, less than three-hundredths of 1 percent — .027 percent, to be exact.
That rate, he said, is acceptable. “One cannot have a system of criminal punishment without accepting the possibility that someone will be punished mistakenly,” he wrote. “That is a truism, not a revelation.”
But there is reason to question Justice Scalia’s math. He had, citing the methodology of an Oregon prosecutor, divided an estimate of the number of exonerated prisoners, almost all of them in murder and rape cases, by the total of all felony convictions.
“By this logic,” Samuel R. Gross, a law professor at the University of Michigan, wrote in a response to be published in this year’s Annual Review of Law and Social Science, “we could estimate the proportion of baseball players who’ve used steroids by dividing the number of major league players who’ve been caught by the total of all baseball players at all levels: major league, minor league, semipro, college and Little League — and maybe throwing in football and basketball players as well.”
Joshua Marquis, the Oregon prosecutor cited by Justice Scalia, granted the logic of Professor Gross’s critique but not his conclusion.
“He correctly points out,” Mr. Marquis, the district attorney in Clatsop County, Ore., said of Professor Gross, “that rape and murders are only a small percentage of all crimes, but then has absolutely no real data to suggest there are epidemic false convictions in, say, burglary cases.”
What the debate demonstrates is that we know almost nothing about the number of innocent people in prison. That is because any effort to estimate it involves extrapolation from just two numbers, neither one satisfactory.
There have been 214 exonerations based on DNA evidence, almost all of them in rape cases, according to the Innocence Project at the Cardozo School of Law. But there is no obvious control group to measure these exonerations against.
Virginia, though, has discovered thousands of closed rape files from 1973 through 1988, many with untested biological evidence. DNA testing of a preliminary sample of 31 of them yielded two wrongful convictions. Those numbers are too small to be reliable, of course, but they would suggest a false conviction rate of 6 percent.
Even that rate may be low, said Shawn Armbrust, the executive director of the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project. Ms. Armbrust said investigators in Virginia were able to get results in only 22 of the 31 tests, suggesting a false conviction rate of 9 percent.
The other important number comes from death row. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, 127 death row inmates have been exonerated.
Here we do have a control group. There have been more than 7,000 death sentences since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.
But exoneration in the capital context is a funny concept. It suggests complete vindication, but its real meaning is generally narrower.
DNA evidence in a rape case can provide something like categorical proof of innocence. Death row exonerations, on the other hand, can be based on all sorts of things, like, say, prosecutorial misconduct. In other words, it is possible to wrongfully convict a guilty defendant.
Mr. Marquis, the Oregon prosecutor cited by Justice Scalia, says the number of authentic death row exonerations is more like 30. Many people exonerated in the legal sense, he said, in fact committed the crime but could not be proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
Professor Gross thinks the number of guilty people released from death row is very small.
Professor Gross concluded that the false conviction rate for death row inmates has ranged from 2.3 percent to 5 percent. Were even the lower end of that range applied to people who received prison sentences of a year or more in the last three decades, he wrote, it would suggest that about 185,000 innocent people have served hard time.
But extrapolating from capital crimes to felonies generally is problematic whatever the number of exonerations.
On the one hand, there is some reason to think that homicide cases yield what Justice David H. Souter, dissenting in that same death penalty decision two years ago, called “an unusually high incidence of false conviction, probably owing to the combined difficulty of investigating without help from the victim, intense pressure to get convictions in homicide cases and the corresponding incentive for the guilty to frame the innocent.”
On the other, as Justice Scalia responded, capital cases “are given especially close scrutiny at every level.”
We are left with an uneasy agreement between Professor Gross and Mr. Marquis on at least one point. “Once we move beyond murder and rape cases,” Professor Gross wrote, “we know very little about any aspect of false conviction.”
But a few general lessons can be drawn nonetheless. Black men are more likely to be falsely convicted of rape than are white men, particularly if the victim is white. Juveniles are more likely to confess falsely to murder. Exonerated defendants are less likely to have serious criminal records. People who maintain their innocence are more likely to be innocent. The longer it takes to solve a crime, the more likely the defendant is not guilty.
Justice Scalia, for his part, focused on what he saw as good news. “Reversal of an erroneous conviction,” he wrote, “demonstrates not the failure of the system but its success.”
Online: Documents and an archive of Adam Liptak’s articles: nytimes.com/adamliptak.
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
Navy Fires Admiral for Lying - Vice Adm. John Stufflebeem
Navy Fires Admiral for Lying - Vice Adm. John Stufflebeem
Navy Fires Admiral for Lying
Associated Press | March 25, 2008
WASHINGTON - The Navy fired a three-star admiral after a Pentagon investigation concluded he'd lied during questioning about whether he had an inappropriate relationship while working at the White House in 1990, officials said March 24.
Vice Adm. John Stufflebeem, a career naval aviator, was relieved as director of the Navy staff last week by the Navy's top officer, Adm. Gary Roughead, Navy spokesman Capt. Frank Thorp said.
The investigation by the Pentagon inspector general began on the basis of an anonymous letter accusing Stufflebeem of having an inappropriate relationship while serving as a military aide to President George H.W. Bush in 1990. The investigation's findings, which have not been made public, are under review by the Navy.
Pending the outcome of the review, Stufflebeem remains a member of Roughead's staff, but at a two-star level, Thorp said.
Stufflebeem served as deputy director for global operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 2001 and appeared before reporters at the Pentagon as a spokesman in the early months of the war in Afghanistan.
He is a 1975 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and was designated a naval aviator in 1980.
Sound Off...What do you think? Join the discussion.
Copyright 2008 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Navy Times
Vice admiral fired over false testimony
By David Brown - Staff writer
Posted : Tuesday Mar 25, 2008 5:44:58 EDT
PH1 Michael W. Pendergrass / Navy Vice Adm. John Stufflebeem, shown here in 2002 as commander, Carrier Group 2, was fired as director of the Navy staff March 21.
Navy Vice Adm. John Harvey, who has already been confirmed to succeed Vice Adm. John Stufflebeem as director of Navy staff, assumed that role effective March 24. He will continue to serve as CNP until his designated replacement comes aboard.
Top of Form
Bottom of Form
The three-star director of the Navy staff was fired last Friday for providing “false and misleading information” during a Defense Department inspector general investigation, the Navy’s top spokesman confirmed Monday.
Vice Adm. John “Boomer” Stufflebeem was relieved by Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead due to the testimony Stufflebeem gave during the investigation, said Rear Adm. Frank Thorp, the Navy’s chief of information.
“As a result, the CNO lost confidence in Admiral Stufflebeem’s judgment and his continuing ability to lead in the office of the CNO,” Thorp said.
Chief of Naval Personnel Vice Adm. John Harvey, who has already been confirmed to succeed Stufflebeem as director of Navy staff, assumed that role effective Monday. He will continue to serve as CNP until his designated replacement, Rear Adm. Mark Ferguson, comes aboard. Stufflebeem had not yet been nominated for a new position prior to Roughead’s actions.
The DoD IG investigation began after officials received an anonymous letter earlier this year accusing Stufflebeem of having an inappropriate relationship while serving as President George H.W. Bush’s military aide in 1990. Thorp was careful to point out that Stufflebeem was relieved directly due to the misleading testimony, not because of the allegations in the letter.
Thorp said the findings of the IG investigation are still under review, and the case will be sent to Adm. Kirkland Donald, director of naval nuclear propulsion, “for appropriate review and action,” he said. In the meantime, Stufflebeem is working on the staff of the CNO, he said.
An earlier anonymous letter regarding Stufflebeem was sent in 1999, but at the time, the Navy and DoD deemed there was “insufficient evidence to pursue the matter,” Thorp said.
Stufflebeem’s rank has reverted to rear admiral, which is typically done when an officer is not serving in a three-star billet. Officers need congressional approval to serve as vice admiral or above, and can only maintain that rank when actually serving in those jobs.
Stufflebeem, a career naval aviator, rose to prominence in the opening days of Operation Enduring Freedom in 2001, frequently briefing reporters as the deputy director for global operations on the Joint Staff. After graduating from the Naval Academy in 1975, Stufflebeem was a practice-squad punter for the Detroit Lions under a special program that allowed the NFL to carry military players in a reserve status while they are on active duty. The Lions asked Stufflebeem to join them full time, but the aviator opted to fly jets.
Navy Fires Admiral for Lying
Associated Press | March 25, 2008
WASHINGTON - The Navy fired a three-star admiral after a Pentagon investigation concluded he'd lied during questioning about whether he had an inappropriate relationship while working at the White House in 1990, officials said March 24.
Vice Adm. John Stufflebeem, a career naval aviator, was relieved as director of the Navy staff last week by the Navy's top officer, Adm. Gary Roughead, Navy spokesman Capt. Frank Thorp said.
The investigation by the Pentagon inspector general began on the basis of an anonymous letter accusing Stufflebeem of having an inappropriate relationship while serving as a military aide to President George H.W. Bush in 1990. The investigation's findings, which have not been made public, are under review by the Navy.
Pending the outcome of the review, Stufflebeem remains a member of Roughead's staff, but at a two-star level, Thorp said.
Stufflebeem served as deputy director for global operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 2001 and appeared before reporters at the Pentagon as a spokesman in the early months of the war in Afghanistan.
He is a 1975 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and was designated a naval aviator in 1980.
Sound Off...What do you think? Join the discussion.
Copyright 2008 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Navy Times
Vice admiral fired over false testimony
By David Brown - Staff writer
Posted : Tuesday Mar 25, 2008 5:44:58 EDT
PH1 Michael W. Pendergrass / Navy Vice Adm. John Stufflebeem, shown here in 2002 as commander, Carrier Group 2, was fired as director of the Navy staff March 21.
Navy Vice Adm. John Harvey, who has already been confirmed to succeed Vice Adm. John Stufflebeem as director of Navy staff, assumed that role effective March 24. He will continue to serve as CNP until his designated replacement comes aboard.
Top of Form
Bottom of Form
The three-star director of the Navy staff was fired last Friday for providing “false and misleading information” during a Defense Department inspector general investigation, the Navy’s top spokesman confirmed Monday.
Vice Adm. John “Boomer” Stufflebeem was relieved by Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead due to the testimony Stufflebeem gave during the investigation, said Rear Adm. Frank Thorp, the Navy’s chief of information.
“As a result, the CNO lost confidence in Admiral Stufflebeem’s judgment and his continuing ability to lead in the office of the CNO,” Thorp said.
Chief of Naval Personnel Vice Adm. John Harvey, who has already been confirmed to succeed Stufflebeem as director of Navy staff, assumed that role effective Monday. He will continue to serve as CNP until his designated replacement, Rear Adm. Mark Ferguson, comes aboard. Stufflebeem had not yet been nominated for a new position prior to Roughead’s actions.
The DoD IG investigation began after officials received an anonymous letter earlier this year accusing Stufflebeem of having an inappropriate relationship while serving as President George H.W. Bush’s military aide in 1990. Thorp was careful to point out that Stufflebeem was relieved directly due to the misleading testimony, not because of the allegations in the letter.
Thorp said the findings of the IG investigation are still under review, and the case will be sent to Adm. Kirkland Donald, director of naval nuclear propulsion, “for appropriate review and action,” he said. In the meantime, Stufflebeem is working on the staff of the CNO, he said.
An earlier anonymous letter regarding Stufflebeem was sent in 1999, but at the time, the Navy and DoD deemed there was “insufficient evidence to pursue the matter,” Thorp said.
Stufflebeem’s rank has reverted to rear admiral, which is typically done when an officer is not serving in a three-star billet. Officers need congressional approval to serve as vice admiral or above, and can only maintain that rank when actually serving in those jobs.
Stufflebeem, a career naval aviator, rose to prominence in the opening days of Operation Enduring Freedom in 2001, frequently briefing reporters as the deputy director for global operations on the Joint Staff. After graduating from the Naval Academy in 1975, Stufflebeem was a practice-squad punter for the Detroit Lions under a special program that allowed the NFL to carry military players in a reserve status while they are on active duty. The Lions asked Stufflebeem to join them full time, but the aviator opted to fly jets.
Iraqi troops take on Shia militia in Basra clash
Iraqi troops take on Shia militia in Basra clash
BBC News
Last Updated: Tuesday, 25 March 2008, 15:59 GMT
Basra's gun rule risks Iraq future
By Paul Wood
BBC Middle East correspondent
Mehdi Army militiamen in Basra in September 2005
The Mehdi Army is one of Basra's most powerful militias
An Iraqi businessman recently sent a container of goods through Basra port. The cost was $500 in transport - and $3,000 in bribes.
The story is related by Patrick Cockburn, biographer of the radical Shia cleric, Moqtada Sadr, whose Mehdi Army militia is the main target of the big security operation in Basra.
Cockburn says, quite correctly, that a lot of the coalition's success in reducing violence in Iraq in recent months has to do with a ceasefire by the Mehdi Army.
There are now worrying signs that action against the militia in Basra and arrest raids in Baghdad are jeopardising the ceasefire.
The Iraqi government felt it had to act in Basra because much of the country's oil exports flow out through there as well as being the route in for many of Iraq's imported goods.
Choked by corruption
That economic lifeline is being choked by corruption and by the violence which accompanies it as rival criminal and political militias fight over the spoils.
Moqtada Sadr
Moqtada Sadr believes his followers will deliver him power
One militia, which has links to the Basra governor, controls the port. Other factions, but chiefly the Mehdi Army, regularly skirmish with them.
Everyday life, too, is dominated by the rule of the gun in Basra.
Some 100 women have been murdered by religious extremists over the past year for wearing make-up or Western style dress.
Local people associate most attacks like these with members of the Mehdi Army. The police are little help as they are heavily infiltrated by the militants.
The fact that the police are so compromised in Basra is one reason why thousands of Iraqi army troops have been sent down from Baghdad to take part in the operation.
Tuesday's fighting in Basra can be seen as the government trying to impose law and order - but also as part of the power struggle within the Shia community.
Moqtada Sadr believes his hundreds of thousands of followers, many of them armed, will eventually deliver power into his hands.
Mehdi Army militiamen in Basra in September 2007
The Mehdi Army has vowed to step up attacks on "occupation forces"
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki and his allies are determined to stop him.
In Basra, the British troops are staying out of this fight, saying the Iraqi army is demonstrating it is capable of acting on its own.
Further north in Baghdad, the Americans tend to act in support of the local security forces.
In reply, the Mehdi Army has promised to step up attacks on the "occupation forces".
The Americans are congratulating themselves at the moment on the success of the surge in averting a Sunni-Shia civil war - and over the thousands of former Sunni insurgents who have changed sides to help the coalition fight al-Qaeda.
But the lesson of Tuesday's events is that intra-Shia violence could be just as dangerous to hopes of peace as sectarian hatreds or the insurgency.
Los Angeles Times - Home
latimes.com Babylon & Beyond blog
IRAQ: Verbal wars of Shiite clergy
Cleric
Before clashes erupted in the southern port of Basra early today, there were many hints that tensions between Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr's Mahdi Army militia and the Iraqi government could explode and imperil Sadr's seven-month cease-fire.
If today's strife turns into a broader conflagration, people might look back at the war of words in sermons last Friday in Shiite mosques as a hint of what was to come.
Last Friday, in the Shiite holy city of Kufa, Sadrist cleric Sheik Abd Al Hadi Al Mohammedawi compared Iraq’s government to late dictator Saddam Hussein. According to the Sadrist newspaper Ishraqat al Sadr, Mohammedawi told worshippers: “Today, the political parties are using the same old Saddamist methods. They have changed from the olive uniforms to the turbans.”
Mohammedawi warned that the government was making a colossal mistake in carrying out raids against Sadr supporters. “They do not realize that the Sadr movement is a volcano throughout Iraq. If it explodes it will crush all of the rotten heads until there are no tyrants on the face of the earth… but this is not our desire,” the paper quoted Mohammedawi as saying.
In turn, Sheik Jaladdin Sagheer, from the rival Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC), took a swipe at the Mahdi Army last Friday in his own sermon, according to the Al Sharqiya satellite channel. Sagheer asked in his Baghdad sermon why the Sadrist movement had so many outlaws and was leveling accusations against others -- a reference to both SIIC and Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's Dawa party, the two main Shiite bodies in the government. Four days later, government security forces were battling the Mahdi Army in Basra, while Sadrists shut down neighborhoods in Baghdad with civil disobedience.
— Ned Parker in Baghdad
Times Online
From Times Online
March 25, 2008
Iraqi troops take on Shia militia in Basra clash
Iraqi police takes a defensive position in Basra, Iraq
( Nabil al-Jurani/AP)
Iraqi police launch their operation in Basra, in what is seen as a crucial test of their ability to provide security
Iraqi police take defensive positions in Basra, Iraq
( Nabil al-Jurani/AP)
The operation is believed to be the largest in Basra City since British troops withdrew in December
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki holds a meeting with Iraqi military and police officials in Basra
( Iraqi Government Office/Reuters)
Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi Prime Minister (centre), holds talks with military leaders in Basra as he oversees the operation
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki shaking hands with a military officer
(AFP/Getty Images)
The Prime Minister (right) met senior military officers as he arrived in the city yesterday, placing his reputation on the line as the operation began
David Byers, and agencies in Basra
Thousands of Iraqi troops have carried out their first military strike against Shia insurgents in Basra since British troops withdrew from the city centre, in a critical test for the newly-trained army.
At least 22 have so far been killed and another 58 injured, many of which were believed to be civilians, as fierce clashes took place between security forces and militants loyal to the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr after a dawn military offensive in the southern city.
Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi Prime Minister, staked his reputation on today's operation against the militants and travelled to the city to oversee it.
However fears immediately grew of a nation-wide deterioration in security as a result, with the cleric's followers announcing a nation-wide campaign of civil disobedience.
"The Prime Minister (Mr al-Maliki) came down to Basra from Baghdad yesterday along with a delegation. He is overseeing the operation. He is at an Iraqi military base," Major Tom Holloway, a British military spokesman, told the AFP news agency.
Major Holloway, whose troops are now based only in Basra Airport, said the operation was taking place to re-impose order on the city. British troops withdrew from the city centre in December, declaring that the Iraqi Army was now equipped to guarantee order.
"We can be encouraged that the Iraqi security forces have the confidence to conduct these missions without coalition support," he added, speaking to the BBC.
The battle took place amid signs that a ceasefire imposed by the leader of Al-Sadr, leader of the Mahdi Army, was under severe strain, leading to fears that Basra could soon slide into total lawlessness.
The truce had been credited as one of the key factors in a steep drop in violence throughout the country over the past several months, but factional clashes in Basra have recently been increasing, with a bitter turf war breaking out between the Mahdi Army, the Badr organisation allied to the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (SIIC) of powerful politician Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, and the smaller Shia party, Fadhila, ahead of provincial elections in October.
Colonel Karim al-Zaidi, a spokesman for the Iraq military, said security forces concentrated heavily in Basra’s centre encountered stiff resistance from Mahdi Army gunmen.
Witnesses said that fighting involved mortars, machine guns and assault weapons and escalated rapidly as soon as security forces entered the Al-Tamiyah neighbourhood, a bastion of al-Sadr's militia, at around 5am. The fighting quickly spread to five other Mahdi Army neighbourhoods.
Television pictures showed Iraqi troops running through the streets firing weapons and taking cover as ambulances raced past. Thick palls of smoke were seen rising above the city’s skyline.
The streets were empty aside from the security forces, emergency vehicles and people in cars fleeing the fighting. Shops and markets were closed.
As the clampdown took place, the Mahdi Army appeared to ramp up a threat to nation-wide security, saying that it was calling a nation-wide campaign of civil disobedience. This began in Bagdad, where hundreds of protesters carrying pictures of al-Sadr staged a sit-down protest at a square. The Iraqi Army claimed that armed Mahdi Army members threatened shopkeepers with death if they opened their stores, in an attempt to grind the city to a halt.
“A group of people with arms this morning threatened civilians, shopkeepers, students and employees not to go about with their daily work in order to enforce their strike in some areas of Baghdad,” it said in a statement. “Such kind of action is against the law and Iraqi forces will deal with them forcefully." Amid fears of a nation-wide escalation, Iraqi police imposed curfews in three Shia cities, of Kut, Nasiriyah and Samawa.
The rapidly unfolding developments took place as a fresh political row erupted over Iraq at home, with Conservatives demanding that Gordon Brown hold a public inquiry into the war.
William Hague, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, said that any lessons learnt from such an inquiry could help in Afghanistan.
"Now is the right time, because five years have passed since the beginning of the war and in fact many of the key decisions will have been made before that, so you are now going back six years or possibly more," he said on GMTV.
"I think unless we start an inquiry now, the memories will have faded, the files will have gone astray, the emails will have been erased. There does come a point where you do have to get on with it."
The Prime Minister reiterated last week that there would be an inquiry into the conflict, but not yet.
Mr Hague's remarks come as the Liberal Democrats demand an apology from every MP who backed the decision to go to war with Iraq.
A new website seeks to draw fresh attention to the Labour and Conservative MPs who backed the deployment of troops just over five years ago.
Times Online
From The Times
March 20, 2008
British in Basra: the hero guests who outstayed their welcome
Iraqi youths throw stones at British soldiers as clashes broke out in the southern city of Basra in 2003
Deborah Haynes in Al-Faw, Basra
British troops from talk to children whilst on patrol in the centre of Basra city
Deborah Haynes in Al-Faw, Basra
Iraqi youths throw stones at British soldiers as clashes broke out in the southern city of Basra
Deborah Haynes in Al-Faw, Basra
The Iraqi general studies a map with a British officer at a border control post metres from the coastal point in southern Iraq where hundreds of British Marines stormed ashore at the start of the war five years ago.
The two commanders, once on opposing sides, now discuss plans for a joint raid against smugglers of weapons, cars, oil and even sheep, as part of a limited British effort to build up Iraqi security forces.
The harmonious scene is in stark contrast to the situation up the road in Iraq's second city of Basra, where Iraqi police and soldiers operate alone. British forces are no longer welcome, having handed over control of security and pulled back to their airport base.
The near-daily thump of rocket fire on the camp serves as a constant reminder of the problems here, despite British commanders' insistence that violence is in decline and the Iraqis are able to manage on their own.
The Marines who pushed up through al-Faw Peninsula, right past the border control post on the night of March 20, 2003, to secure Iraq's oil infrastructure could never have predicted that five years later the British military would still be here. The people of Basra have also readjusted expectations. While applauding the end of Saddam Hussein, many are unhappy with the rise of rival Shia militias and the inability of their new political leaders to provide security.
In addition, unemployment is high and, while the availability of electricity and water has improved, there is still a long way to go. Also, Iraq's multibillion-pound oil resources remain largely untapped — foreign oil giants are too fearful of the violence to venture into the country and invest.
The insecurity has cast serious doubts over plans to reduce Britain's military presence in Iraq to 2,500 troops by the spring. Next week Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, will announce that another full brigade will be sent to Basra in May to replace the existing 4,100 troops.
There had been expectations that a smaller force would be sent for the next troop rotation. The Desert Rats — 7th Armoured Brigade — will now deploy in May and June for a six-month tour.
One battlegroup of about 500 soldiers in Basra had been told that it might be sent home two months early, but is now committed to serving a full six-month tour until June.
Lieutenant-Colonel Gary Deakin, commanding officer of the Duke of Lancaster's battle group, said: “What was clear right from the word go was that it would depend on the situation.”
The British military, which was responsible for Iraq's four southern provinces after the invasion, has cut its presence over the past year while the US has deployed an extra 30,000 troops into Baghdad and the surrounding belts to tackle violence there.
Deeming the Iraqi Army, police and local political leaders to be ready, Britain has also gradually handed control of security to the Iraqis in Muthanna, Dhiqar, Maysan and finally Basra, a symbolic shift that took place in December.
British troops are now given the task largely of trying to protect themselves at the airport as well as continuing to train Iraq's police, military and border and coastal guards. There are concerns, however, about the continuing effectiveness of such a mission if troop numbers dwindle further.
“I think the key challenge is at what force levels do you achieve what you need to achieve to make your ship sail forwards or just keep it sitting in the water,” said Colonel Deakin, who on Tuesday was planning the counter-smuggling operation with Brigadier-General Abdul Hade, operational planner for guarding Iraq's wet border.
He added: “Right now the ship is going forwards. We are rowing forwards in the right direction. If you take out a couple of oarsmen maybe the tide would flow against you.”
Throwing pressure on Gordon Brown to resist further troop cuts, Hoshiyar Zebari, the Iraqi Foreign Minister, this week accused the military of doing nothing.
“The militia, the organised crime, is making havoc in the city,” he told Channel 4. Asked if Britain needed to re-engage rather than pull troops out, he said: “In my view they do.”
The majority of Britain's forces are holed up at the airport base, where nerves are frayed by the constant threat of rockets, although the number of attacks is vastly reduced from its peak last summer. The 175th British personnel to die since 2003 was killed by a rocket two weeks ago.
Many soldiers say that they would rather be involved in the more hands-on action that British troops are experiencing in southern Afghanistan.
“I have already got the medal for here. I would rather be doing an infantry job out there,” said Lance Bombadier Ben James, 23.
The calculation that any movement by British forces inside Basra city would create a violent militia backlash means that no troops have been in the city since September. This also prevents officials from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Department for International Development from getting out and seeing first-hand the impact of reconstruction efforts.
John Moss, head of programmes for Basra's provincial reconstruction team, said: “As long as southern Iraq remains off limits to non-Iraqis then it's going to be extremely difficult for them to grow their economy.”
Times Online
From The Times
March 18, 2008
Short of kit, short of support: how the Army failed in Basra
At first the British patrolled in berets. Then chaos grew from order
Anthony Loyd
In those final long, hot, dog-end summer weeks of fighting in Basra last year, the British battle group marooned in the palace found themselves with a shortening list of reasons to die. Some were killed in efforts simply to resupply themselves, guarding logistics convoys attempting to run the murder mile through the city from the airport.
“Losing blokes just to resupply ourselves is a different kind of loss,” a corporal from the beleaguered 4 Rifles garrison told me at the palace in August. “Sometimes it feels like you lost them just to bring in a loaf of bread or a toilet roll.”
His commanding officer was equally succinct. “Last time we did it the convoy encountered 25 IEDs [roadside bombs],” he said of the most recent resupply effort. “We were fixed. We didn’t have the initiative. The JAM [Jaish Al Mahdi] see the trucks form up, they know the routes in, they know the routes out. It’s a f***ing nightmare.”
Among the 11 dead and 43 wounded that the 550-strong unit suffered that summer, the worst casualty rate in the shortest period of time inflicted on any British force in Iraq, other soldiers were killed on night operations that included the phrase “preserving national reputation” in their orders.
The last Foreign and Commonwealth Office diplomat had fled the palace months before, leaving 4 Rifles with the invidious task of hanging on there until Iraqi security forces were judged ready to take over control of the city. They were a close unit who fought hard, alone and hacked it pretty well. Aside from their esprit de corps, one thing the soldiers were not dying for was a worthwhile cause that was part of a coherent strategy to win.
That era of hope was already long gone. By the time the last rifleman was withdrawn safely from the palace to the airport, the city they left behind was in a very different state from the one imagined when victorious British troops had entered Basra in 2003.
Gang leaders from the three dominant militias of Basra had penetrated every level of local governance, devolving it from the control of Baghdad. The local police were utterly corrupt. Swaths of the city were no-go areas for either coalition or Iraqi army units. Human rights were abysmal, democracy a non-starter. Where did it all go wrong?
Britain’s military involvement in Iraq was shadowed by doubt from the very start.
Commanders were so dubious as to the legality and wisdom of invading Iraq that Lord Boyce, then Chief of Defence Staff, insisted that the Attorney-General at the time, Lord Goldsmith, provide in writing unequivocal written assurance that the invasion was lawful.
Admiral Sir Alan West, the First Sea Lord, was so unconvinced of it that he sought private legal advice.
General Sir Michael Jackson, head of the Army, noted his misgivings with a reported remark that he had no intention of ending up in a Hague cell next to Slobodan Milosevic.
Despite these concerns, and worries over an exit strategy, British forces completed their invasion in a timely and professional manner, seizing Basra and achieving their other southern objectives on schedule.
For a time, as British soldiers patrolled the city in soft hats and berets apparently enjoying the goodwill of locals, it seemed that the Army could indeed hark back to its experience in Northern Ireland and Malaya to justify its reputation as a skilled counter-insurgency force. The legend soon fell apart.
The American-driven dismemberment of the Iraqi security forces and Baathist apparatus had a knock-on effect upon reconstruction efforts in the south, albeit more slowly than in Baghdad and the Sunni triangle. Chaos gradually grew from order and support for coalition forces was eroded by the collapse of civic amenities.
Under-resourced and with weakening political support at home, British forces in Basra made the first of several mistakes in response to the situation when they attempted to incorporate the city’s burgeoning Shia militias into the local police force. Rather than undermine the strength of the militias, they created and trained a law-enforcement body that was utterly partisan.
The power of the militias increased daily as death squads in police uniform assassinated political rivals and enforced strict Islamic codes. By 2005 Basrawi women were being forced to don the veil. Shops selling alcohol or music were being closed down. In one infamous incident Mahdi Army militiamen, abetted by policemen, shot two male university students and beat dozens of others merely for picnicking in a Basra park with women colleagues. One of the women was filmed being stripped half-naked as a warning. The British, their troop levels already in descent, were unwilling and unable to intervene.
Meanwhile, the Army revealed internal problems that deeply undermined its reputation.
Baha Musa, a Basra hotel receptionist, was killed while in British detention in September 2003. His body had 93 injuries concurrent with protracted beating and asphyxiation. His death suggested that some British units deployed to Iraq had little clue as to what sort of values they were supposed to export with them or lacked the discipline and training to prevent themselves from conducting atrocities.
“This was not a case of misjudgment in the heat of battle or the heat of the moment,” General Sir Richard Dannatt, Chief of General Staff, remarked at the conclusion last year of a court martial of men alleged to be involved in Mr Musa’s death. “Nobody who knows anything about the facts has ever suggested that it was.”
No one has been convicted for the killing. One man, Corporal Payne, was convicted on the lesser charge of inhuman treatment of persons protected by the Geneva Conventions.
Investigators were accused by some officers of launching a witch-hunt while many of those allegedly involved in Mr Musa’s killing preferred to close ranks and keep silent.
Whatever the military’s failings, there was little attempt by the British Government to capitalise on the Army’s strengths in southern Iraq.
British soldiers were still dying in thinly armoured “Snatch” Land Rovers last autumn, nearly two years after the Americans had armoured all their Humvees. There was no will to commit more troops to the situation and “Iraq” had already become something of a dirty word in Britain.
In the meantime, America had committed thousands more soldiers to a surge in Baghdad, a successful gambit that went hand in hand with the rewriting of the US Army’s counter-insurgency doctrine by their dynamic commander, General David Petraeus.
The British Army was never resourced or enabled to match these doctrinal and practical advances. A mini-surge by the British, called Operation Sinbad, did temporarily check the ascent of the al-Mahdi Army in Basra last spring. It laid some of the ground for a handover to Iraqi units, but without reinforcements its successes were quickly reversed and the violence increased once more.
Painfully aware that the Army was now more of an antagonistic influence on Basra than a palliative one, and that it was clearly unable to fight simultaneous campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, there was little other option but for the British to draw up their plans to pull back from Basra Palace to a final overwatch position at the airport.
By the time this penultimate chapter occurred, a generation of British soldiers had emerged from the Iraq experience battle-hardened and cynical. They are aware that the demands placed upon them were seldom matched by support from the Government, which had committed them to an unpopular and ultimately futile war. The sense of vestigial anger within the Army will unlikely be appeased in Afghanistan, where they face a different set of challenges but labour under a similar set of shortfalls, directed by a political strategy that remains at best opaque.
However history finally records the British Army’s involvement in Iraq, the question “What was it all for?” seems certain to haunt the dreams of thousands of veterans for years to come.
Word for word
“[British troops] will stay there as long as it takes to provide the necessary security to people in and around Basrah.”
Geoff Hoon, Downing Street lobby briefing, April 7, 2003
click here to go to the IC Publications home page
25/03/2008 15:20 BAGHDAD, March 25 (AFP)
Mahdi Army: the most powerful militia in Iraq
The feared Mahdi Army militia led by firebrand anti-US Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who threatened all-out civil revolt on Tuesday, is the armed wing of the most formidable Iraqi Shiite group.
Mahdi Army fighters were locked in running battles with Iraqi security forces in the southern port city of Basra that left seven dead amid a heavy crackdown against the rival militias who hold sway in the crucial oil hub.
Sadr warned in a statement he would launch protests, a nationwide strike and "general civil disobedience" if attacks against his militia are not halted.
The US military once regarded the Mahdi Army and its fiery black-turbaned leader as the greatest threat to Iraq's stability as the nation continues to grapple with a bloody insurgency and sectarian warfare.
But US military commanders say a Sadr truce has been instrumental in bringing about a significant decline in the level of violence, although US and Iraqi forces continue raids and arrests of his militiamen.
The 60,000-strong milita is formed namely of impoverished young men, with new recruits signing up regularly, many of them at mosques, and the group's arsenal consists mainly of assault rifles, rocket launchers and machine guns.
In 2004, Sadr's men twice challenged US forces with armed rebellions and although they took a beating, the nationalist cleric emerged as a figure to be reckoned with.
But last month, Sadr ordered the militia to prolong for six months a ceasefire originally introduced in August aimed at halting attacks on US forces and rival armed groups.
Senior group members said the truce, announced after allegations Sadr's gunmen were involved in bloody clashes in the shrine city of Karbala, aimed to rein in wayward factions operating beyond the cleric's writ.
"The attempt is to reorganise the militia but not to dismantle it. It is also an effort to root out the rogue elements," one aide said.
Sadr, known as a "sayyid" or descendant of the Prophet Mohammed, is believed to have the power to command war or peace in Iraq but has had a long absence from the public eye.
In the past year a number of senior Mahdi leaders have allegedly broken away from the main group and the US military claims many are running their own independent cells and carrying out sectarian attacks against the Sunnis.
Since Basra province was handed over to Iraqi control by British forces in December, it has become the theatre of a bitter turf war between the Mahdi Army and its Shiite foes.
These include the Badr organisation allied to the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (SIIC) of powerful politician Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, and the smaller Shiite party, Fadhila.
The Mahdi Army, created after the 2003 US-led invasion, became the most active and feared armed Shiite group, blamed by Washington for death-squad killings of thousands of Sunnis.
It is named after Al-Mahdi Al-Montazar (the Awaited Mahdi) -- the revered 12th imam who disappeared in 907.
Initially underestimated by US and Iraqi officials, the son of revered Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr also wields massive influence in the corridors of power.
Since he returned to Iraq's turbulent political scene in May last year after disappearing from public view for seven months, Sadr has been working hard to bolster his nationalist credentials.
After throwing his weight behind Shiite politician Nuri al-Maliki in 2006, ensuring he became prime minister, Sadr ordered his six ministers to pull out of the cabinet last April.
In September it pulled out of the ruling Shiite dominated coalition, further upsetting Iraq's already fractured political landscape. However, it retains 32 MPs in the 275-seat parliament.
The cabinet walkout was in protest at the government's refusal to set a timetable for a US troop withdrawal -- something favoured by a majority of Iraqis and especially Sadr's supporters.
The cleric is idolised by millions of Shiites, especially in the shrine city of Najaf where he has his headquarters and the Baghdad slums of Sadr City.
"(Sadr) has become the authentic spokesman for a significant portion of traditionally disenfranchised Iraqis who, far from benefiting from the former regime's ouster, remained marginalised from the emerging political order," the International Crisis Group said.
burs/hkb/txw
Herald Sun
AUSTRALIA
Cleric's bastion attacked
FIERCE fighting erupted early yesterday between Iraq's security forces and the Mehdi Army of radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in Basra.
An Iraqi military official said Iraqi forces had launched an attack to "cleanse" the southern city of armed groups.
In a hail of gunfire and mortar blasts, security forces entered Al-Tamiyah neighbourhood, a bastion of the Mehdi Army at 5am.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was in Basra to oversee the sweep in Iraq's second largest city.
"Basra city is experiencing a brutal campaign from internal and external groups targeting its security and stability by killing scientific, social and spiritual personalities as well as innocent men and women," Mr Maliki said.
"This is accompanied by the smuggling of oil, weapons and drugs. The outlaws are finding support from within the state and outside.
This is why Basra has become a city where civilians cannot even secure their lives and property," he said.
The fighting came as a report said Iraq was more stable than Afghanistan with less violence.
The report published yesterday by British-based Jane's Information Group ranked Afghanistan as the third most-unstable area after the Gaza Strip and West Bank, and Somalia. Iraq was at No. 22.
Jane's judged the US to be only the 22nd most stable of 235 countries or territories -- just below Australia and Portugal -- due to international drug trafficking and the proliferation of small arms within US society.
-AFP
BBC News
Last Updated: Tuesday, 25 March 2008, 15:59 GMT
Basra's gun rule risks Iraq future
By Paul Wood
BBC Middle East correspondent
Mehdi Army militiamen in Basra in September 2005
The Mehdi Army is one of Basra's most powerful militias
An Iraqi businessman recently sent a container of goods through Basra port. The cost was $500 in transport - and $3,000 in bribes.
The story is related by Patrick Cockburn, biographer of the radical Shia cleric, Moqtada Sadr, whose Mehdi Army militia is the main target of the big security operation in Basra.
Cockburn says, quite correctly, that a lot of the coalition's success in reducing violence in Iraq in recent months has to do with a ceasefire by the Mehdi Army.
There are now worrying signs that action against the militia in Basra and arrest raids in Baghdad are jeopardising the ceasefire.
The Iraqi government felt it had to act in Basra because much of the country's oil exports flow out through there as well as being the route in for many of Iraq's imported goods.
Choked by corruption
That economic lifeline is being choked by corruption and by the violence which accompanies it as rival criminal and political militias fight over the spoils.
Moqtada Sadr
Moqtada Sadr believes his followers will deliver him power
One militia, which has links to the Basra governor, controls the port. Other factions, but chiefly the Mehdi Army, regularly skirmish with them.
Everyday life, too, is dominated by the rule of the gun in Basra.
Some 100 women have been murdered by religious extremists over the past year for wearing make-up or Western style dress.
Local people associate most attacks like these with members of the Mehdi Army. The police are little help as they are heavily infiltrated by the militants.
The fact that the police are so compromised in Basra is one reason why thousands of Iraqi army troops have been sent down from Baghdad to take part in the operation.
Tuesday's fighting in Basra can be seen as the government trying to impose law and order - but also as part of the power struggle within the Shia community.
Moqtada Sadr believes his hundreds of thousands of followers, many of them armed, will eventually deliver power into his hands.
Mehdi Army militiamen in Basra in September 2007
The Mehdi Army has vowed to step up attacks on "occupation forces"
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki and his allies are determined to stop him.
In Basra, the British troops are staying out of this fight, saying the Iraqi army is demonstrating it is capable of acting on its own.
Further north in Baghdad, the Americans tend to act in support of the local security forces.
In reply, the Mehdi Army has promised to step up attacks on the "occupation forces".
The Americans are congratulating themselves at the moment on the success of the surge in averting a Sunni-Shia civil war - and over the thousands of former Sunni insurgents who have changed sides to help the coalition fight al-Qaeda.
But the lesson of Tuesday's events is that intra-Shia violence could be just as dangerous to hopes of peace as sectarian hatreds or the insurgency.
Los Angeles Times - Home
latimes.com Babylon & Beyond blog
IRAQ: Verbal wars of Shiite clergy
Cleric
Before clashes erupted in the southern port of Basra early today, there were many hints that tensions between Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr's Mahdi Army militia and the Iraqi government could explode and imperil Sadr's seven-month cease-fire.
If today's strife turns into a broader conflagration, people might look back at the war of words in sermons last Friday in Shiite mosques as a hint of what was to come.
Last Friday, in the Shiite holy city of Kufa, Sadrist cleric Sheik Abd Al Hadi Al Mohammedawi compared Iraq’s government to late dictator Saddam Hussein. According to the Sadrist newspaper Ishraqat al Sadr, Mohammedawi told worshippers: “Today, the political parties are using the same old Saddamist methods. They have changed from the olive uniforms to the turbans.”
Mohammedawi warned that the government was making a colossal mistake in carrying out raids against Sadr supporters. “They do not realize that the Sadr movement is a volcano throughout Iraq. If it explodes it will crush all of the rotten heads until there are no tyrants on the face of the earth… but this is not our desire,” the paper quoted Mohammedawi as saying.
In turn, Sheik Jaladdin Sagheer, from the rival Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC), took a swipe at the Mahdi Army last Friday in his own sermon, according to the Al Sharqiya satellite channel. Sagheer asked in his Baghdad sermon why the Sadrist movement had so many outlaws and was leveling accusations against others -- a reference to both SIIC and Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's Dawa party, the two main Shiite bodies in the government. Four days later, government security forces were battling the Mahdi Army in Basra, while Sadrists shut down neighborhoods in Baghdad with civil disobedience.
— Ned Parker in Baghdad
Times Online
From Times Online
March 25, 2008
Iraqi troops take on Shia militia in Basra clash
Iraqi police takes a defensive position in Basra, Iraq
( Nabil al-Jurani/AP)
Iraqi police launch their operation in Basra, in what is seen as a crucial test of their ability to provide security
Iraqi police take defensive positions in Basra, Iraq
( Nabil al-Jurani/AP)
The operation is believed to be the largest in Basra City since British troops withdrew in December
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki holds a meeting with Iraqi military and police officials in Basra
( Iraqi Government Office/Reuters)
Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi Prime Minister (centre), holds talks with military leaders in Basra as he oversees the operation
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki shaking hands with a military officer
(AFP/Getty Images)
The Prime Minister (right) met senior military officers as he arrived in the city yesterday, placing his reputation on the line as the operation began
David Byers, and agencies in Basra
Thousands of Iraqi troops have carried out their first military strike against Shia insurgents in Basra since British troops withdrew from the city centre, in a critical test for the newly-trained army.
At least 22 have so far been killed and another 58 injured, many of which were believed to be civilians, as fierce clashes took place between security forces and militants loyal to the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr after a dawn military offensive in the southern city.
Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi Prime Minister, staked his reputation on today's operation against the militants and travelled to the city to oversee it.
However fears immediately grew of a nation-wide deterioration in security as a result, with the cleric's followers announcing a nation-wide campaign of civil disobedience.
"The Prime Minister (Mr al-Maliki) came down to Basra from Baghdad yesterday along with a delegation. He is overseeing the operation. He is at an Iraqi military base," Major Tom Holloway, a British military spokesman, told the AFP news agency.
Major Holloway, whose troops are now based only in Basra Airport, said the operation was taking place to re-impose order on the city. British troops withdrew from the city centre in December, declaring that the Iraqi Army was now equipped to guarantee order.
"We can be encouraged that the Iraqi security forces have the confidence to conduct these missions without coalition support," he added, speaking to the BBC.
The battle took place amid signs that a ceasefire imposed by the leader of Al-Sadr, leader of the Mahdi Army, was under severe strain, leading to fears that Basra could soon slide into total lawlessness.
The truce had been credited as one of the key factors in a steep drop in violence throughout the country over the past several months, but factional clashes in Basra have recently been increasing, with a bitter turf war breaking out between the Mahdi Army, the Badr organisation allied to the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (SIIC) of powerful politician Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, and the smaller Shia party, Fadhila, ahead of provincial elections in October.
Colonel Karim al-Zaidi, a spokesman for the Iraq military, said security forces concentrated heavily in Basra’s centre encountered stiff resistance from Mahdi Army gunmen.
Witnesses said that fighting involved mortars, machine guns and assault weapons and escalated rapidly as soon as security forces entered the Al-Tamiyah neighbourhood, a bastion of al-Sadr's militia, at around 5am. The fighting quickly spread to five other Mahdi Army neighbourhoods.
Television pictures showed Iraqi troops running through the streets firing weapons and taking cover as ambulances raced past. Thick palls of smoke were seen rising above the city’s skyline.
The streets were empty aside from the security forces, emergency vehicles and people in cars fleeing the fighting. Shops and markets were closed.
As the clampdown took place, the Mahdi Army appeared to ramp up a threat to nation-wide security, saying that it was calling a nation-wide campaign of civil disobedience. This began in Bagdad, where hundreds of protesters carrying pictures of al-Sadr staged a sit-down protest at a square. The Iraqi Army claimed that armed Mahdi Army members threatened shopkeepers with death if they opened their stores, in an attempt to grind the city to a halt.
“A group of people with arms this morning threatened civilians, shopkeepers, students and employees not to go about with their daily work in order to enforce their strike in some areas of Baghdad,” it said in a statement. “Such kind of action is against the law and Iraqi forces will deal with them forcefully." Amid fears of a nation-wide escalation, Iraqi police imposed curfews in three Shia cities, of Kut, Nasiriyah and Samawa.
The rapidly unfolding developments took place as a fresh political row erupted over Iraq at home, with Conservatives demanding that Gordon Brown hold a public inquiry into the war.
William Hague, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, said that any lessons learnt from such an inquiry could help in Afghanistan.
"Now is the right time, because five years have passed since the beginning of the war and in fact many of the key decisions will have been made before that, so you are now going back six years or possibly more," he said on GMTV.
"I think unless we start an inquiry now, the memories will have faded, the files will have gone astray, the emails will have been erased. There does come a point where you do have to get on with it."
The Prime Minister reiterated last week that there would be an inquiry into the conflict, but not yet.
Mr Hague's remarks come as the Liberal Democrats demand an apology from every MP who backed the decision to go to war with Iraq.
A new website seeks to draw fresh attention to the Labour and Conservative MPs who backed the deployment of troops just over five years ago.
Times Online
From The Times
March 20, 2008
British in Basra: the hero guests who outstayed their welcome
Iraqi youths throw stones at British soldiers as clashes broke out in the southern city of Basra in 2003
Deborah Haynes in Al-Faw, Basra
British troops from talk to children whilst on patrol in the centre of Basra city
Deborah Haynes in Al-Faw, Basra
Iraqi youths throw stones at British soldiers as clashes broke out in the southern city of Basra
Deborah Haynes in Al-Faw, Basra
The Iraqi general studies a map with a British officer at a border control post metres from the coastal point in southern Iraq where hundreds of British Marines stormed ashore at the start of the war five years ago.
The two commanders, once on opposing sides, now discuss plans for a joint raid against smugglers of weapons, cars, oil and even sheep, as part of a limited British effort to build up Iraqi security forces.
The harmonious scene is in stark contrast to the situation up the road in Iraq's second city of Basra, where Iraqi police and soldiers operate alone. British forces are no longer welcome, having handed over control of security and pulled back to their airport base.
The near-daily thump of rocket fire on the camp serves as a constant reminder of the problems here, despite British commanders' insistence that violence is in decline and the Iraqis are able to manage on their own.
The Marines who pushed up through al-Faw Peninsula, right past the border control post on the night of March 20, 2003, to secure Iraq's oil infrastructure could never have predicted that five years later the British military would still be here. The people of Basra have also readjusted expectations. While applauding the end of Saddam Hussein, many are unhappy with the rise of rival Shia militias and the inability of their new political leaders to provide security.
In addition, unemployment is high and, while the availability of electricity and water has improved, there is still a long way to go. Also, Iraq's multibillion-pound oil resources remain largely untapped — foreign oil giants are too fearful of the violence to venture into the country and invest.
The insecurity has cast serious doubts over plans to reduce Britain's military presence in Iraq to 2,500 troops by the spring. Next week Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, will announce that another full brigade will be sent to Basra in May to replace the existing 4,100 troops.
There had been expectations that a smaller force would be sent for the next troop rotation. The Desert Rats — 7th Armoured Brigade — will now deploy in May and June for a six-month tour.
One battlegroup of about 500 soldiers in Basra had been told that it might be sent home two months early, but is now committed to serving a full six-month tour until June.
Lieutenant-Colonel Gary Deakin, commanding officer of the Duke of Lancaster's battle group, said: “What was clear right from the word go was that it would depend on the situation.”
The British military, which was responsible for Iraq's four southern provinces after the invasion, has cut its presence over the past year while the US has deployed an extra 30,000 troops into Baghdad and the surrounding belts to tackle violence there.
Deeming the Iraqi Army, police and local political leaders to be ready, Britain has also gradually handed control of security to the Iraqis in Muthanna, Dhiqar, Maysan and finally Basra, a symbolic shift that took place in December.
British troops are now given the task largely of trying to protect themselves at the airport as well as continuing to train Iraq's police, military and border and coastal guards. There are concerns, however, about the continuing effectiveness of such a mission if troop numbers dwindle further.
“I think the key challenge is at what force levels do you achieve what you need to achieve to make your ship sail forwards or just keep it sitting in the water,” said Colonel Deakin, who on Tuesday was planning the counter-smuggling operation with Brigadier-General Abdul Hade, operational planner for guarding Iraq's wet border.
He added: “Right now the ship is going forwards. We are rowing forwards in the right direction. If you take out a couple of oarsmen maybe the tide would flow against you.”
Throwing pressure on Gordon Brown to resist further troop cuts, Hoshiyar Zebari, the Iraqi Foreign Minister, this week accused the military of doing nothing.
“The militia, the organised crime, is making havoc in the city,” he told Channel 4. Asked if Britain needed to re-engage rather than pull troops out, he said: “In my view they do.”
The majority of Britain's forces are holed up at the airport base, where nerves are frayed by the constant threat of rockets, although the number of attacks is vastly reduced from its peak last summer. The 175th British personnel to die since 2003 was killed by a rocket two weeks ago.
Many soldiers say that they would rather be involved in the more hands-on action that British troops are experiencing in southern Afghanistan.
“I have already got the medal for here. I would rather be doing an infantry job out there,” said Lance Bombadier Ben James, 23.
The calculation that any movement by British forces inside Basra city would create a violent militia backlash means that no troops have been in the city since September. This also prevents officials from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Department for International Development from getting out and seeing first-hand the impact of reconstruction efforts.
John Moss, head of programmes for Basra's provincial reconstruction team, said: “As long as southern Iraq remains off limits to non-Iraqis then it's going to be extremely difficult for them to grow their economy.”
Times Online
From The Times
March 18, 2008
Short of kit, short of support: how the Army failed in Basra
At first the British patrolled in berets. Then chaos grew from order
Anthony Loyd
In those final long, hot, dog-end summer weeks of fighting in Basra last year, the British battle group marooned in the palace found themselves with a shortening list of reasons to die. Some were killed in efforts simply to resupply themselves, guarding logistics convoys attempting to run the murder mile through the city from the airport.
“Losing blokes just to resupply ourselves is a different kind of loss,” a corporal from the beleaguered 4 Rifles garrison told me at the palace in August. “Sometimes it feels like you lost them just to bring in a loaf of bread or a toilet roll.”
His commanding officer was equally succinct. “Last time we did it the convoy encountered 25 IEDs [roadside bombs],” he said of the most recent resupply effort. “We were fixed. We didn’t have the initiative. The JAM [Jaish Al Mahdi] see the trucks form up, they know the routes in, they know the routes out. It’s a f***ing nightmare.”
Among the 11 dead and 43 wounded that the 550-strong unit suffered that summer, the worst casualty rate in the shortest period of time inflicted on any British force in Iraq, other soldiers were killed on night operations that included the phrase “preserving national reputation” in their orders.
The last Foreign and Commonwealth Office diplomat had fled the palace months before, leaving 4 Rifles with the invidious task of hanging on there until Iraqi security forces were judged ready to take over control of the city. They were a close unit who fought hard, alone and hacked it pretty well. Aside from their esprit de corps, one thing the soldiers were not dying for was a worthwhile cause that was part of a coherent strategy to win.
That era of hope was already long gone. By the time the last rifleman was withdrawn safely from the palace to the airport, the city they left behind was in a very different state from the one imagined when victorious British troops had entered Basra in 2003.
Gang leaders from the three dominant militias of Basra had penetrated every level of local governance, devolving it from the control of Baghdad. The local police were utterly corrupt. Swaths of the city were no-go areas for either coalition or Iraqi army units. Human rights were abysmal, democracy a non-starter. Where did it all go wrong?
Britain’s military involvement in Iraq was shadowed by doubt from the very start.
Commanders were so dubious as to the legality and wisdom of invading Iraq that Lord Boyce, then Chief of Defence Staff, insisted that the Attorney-General at the time, Lord Goldsmith, provide in writing unequivocal written assurance that the invasion was lawful.
Admiral Sir Alan West, the First Sea Lord, was so unconvinced of it that he sought private legal advice.
General Sir Michael Jackson, head of the Army, noted his misgivings with a reported remark that he had no intention of ending up in a Hague cell next to Slobodan Milosevic.
Despite these concerns, and worries over an exit strategy, British forces completed their invasion in a timely and professional manner, seizing Basra and achieving their other southern objectives on schedule.
For a time, as British soldiers patrolled the city in soft hats and berets apparently enjoying the goodwill of locals, it seemed that the Army could indeed hark back to its experience in Northern Ireland and Malaya to justify its reputation as a skilled counter-insurgency force. The legend soon fell apart.
The American-driven dismemberment of the Iraqi security forces and Baathist apparatus had a knock-on effect upon reconstruction efforts in the south, albeit more slowly than in Baghdad and the Sunni triangle. Chaos gradually grew from order and support for coalition forces was eroded by the collapse of civic amenities.
Under-resourced and with weakening political support at home, British forces in Basra made the first of several mistakes in response to the situation when they attempted to incorporate the city’s burgeoning Shia militias into the local police force. Rather than undermine the strength of the militias, they created and trained a law-enforcement body that was utterly partisan.
The power of the militias increased daily as death squads in police uniform assassinated political rivals and enforced strict Islamic codes. By 2005 Basrawi women were being forced to don the veil. Shops selling alcohol or music were being closed down. In one infamous incident Mahdi Army militiamen, abetted by policemen, shot two male university students and beat dozens of others merely for picnicking in a Basra park with women colleagues. One of the women was filmed being stripped half-naked as a warning. The British, their troop levels already in descent, were unwilling and unable to intervene.
Meanwhile, the Army revealed internal problems that deeply undermined its reputation.
Baha Musa, a Basra hotel receptionist, was killed while in British detention in September 2003. His body had 93 injuries concurrent with protracted beating and asphyxiation. His death suggested that some British units deployed to Iraq had little clue as to what sort of values they were supposed to export with them or lacked the discipline and training to prevent themselves from conducting atrocities.
“This was not a case of misjudgment in the heat of battle or the heat of the moment,” General Sir Richard Dannatt, Chief of General Staff, remarked at the conclusion last year of a court martial of men alleged to be involved in Mr Musa’s death. “Nobody who knows anything about the facts has ever suggested that it was.”
No one has been convicted for the killing. One man, Corporal Payne, was convicted on the lesser charge of inhuman treatment of persons protected by the Geneva Conventions.
Investigators were accused by some officers of launching a witch-hunt while many of those allegedly involved in Mr Musa’s killing preferred to close ranks and keep silent.
Whatever the military’s failings, there was little attempt by the British Government to capitalise on the Army’s strengths in southern Iraq.
British soldiers were still dying in thinly armoured “Snatch” Land Rovers last autumn, nearly two years after the Americans had armoured all their Humvees. There was no will to commit more troops to the situation and “Iraq” had already become something of a dirty word in Britain.
In the meantime, America had committed thousands more soldiers to a surge in Baghdad, a successful gambit that went hand in hand with the rewriting of the US Army’s counter-insurgency doctrine by their dynamic commander, General David Petraeus.
The British Army was never resourced or enabled to match these doctrinal and practical advances. A mini-surge by the British, called Operation Sinbad, did temporarily check the ascent of the al-Mahdi Army in Basra last spring. It laid some of the ground for a handover to Iraqi units, but without reinforcements its successes were quickly reversed and the violence increased once more.
Painfully aware that the Army was now more of an antagonistic influence on Basra than a palliative one, and that it was clearly unable to fight simultaneous campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, there was little other option but for the British to draw up their plans to pull back from Basra Palace to a final overwatch position at the airport.
By the time this penultimate chapter occurred, a generation of British soldiers had emerged from the Iraq experience battle-hardened and cynical. They are aware that the demands placed upon them were seldom matched by support from the Government, which had committed them to an unpopular and ultimately futile war. The sense of vestigial anger within the Army will unlikely be appeased in Afghanistan, where they face a different set of challenges but labour under a similar set of shortfalls, directed by a political strategy that remains at best opaque.
However history finally records the British Army’s involvement in Iraq, the question “What was it all for?” seems certain to haunt the dreams of thousands of veterans for years to come.
Word for word
“[British troops] will stay there as long as it takes to provide the necessary security to people in and around Basrah.”
Geoff Hoon, Downing Street lobby briefing, April 7, 2003
click here to go to the IC Publications home page
25/03/2008 15:20 BAGHDAD, March 25 (AFP)
Mahdi Army: the most powerful militia in Iraq
The feared Mahdi Army militia led by firebrand anti-US Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who threatened all-out civil revolt on Tuesday, is the armed wing of the most formidable Iraqi Shiite group.
Mahdi Army fighters were locked in running battles with Iraqi security forces in the southern port city of Basra that left seven dead amid a heavy crackdown against the rival militias who hold sway in the crucial oil hub.
Sadr warned in a statement he would launch protests, a nationwide strike and "general civil disobedience" if attacks against his militia are not halted.
The US military once regarded the Mahdi Army and its fiery black-turbaned leader as the greatest threat to Iraq's stability as the nation continues to grapple with a bloody insurgency and sectarian warfare.
But US military commanders say a Sadr truce has been instrumental in bringing about a significant decline in the level of violence, although US and Iraqi forces continue raids and arrests of his militiamen.
The 60,000-strong milita is formed namely of impoverished young men, with new recruits signing up regularly, many of them at mosques, and the group's arsenal consists mainly of assault rifles, rocket launchers and machine guns.
In 2004, Sadr's men twice challenged US forces with armed rebellions and although they took a beating, the nationalist cleric emerged as a figure to be reckoned with.
But last month, Sadr ordered the militia to prolong for six months a ceasefire originally introduced in August aimed at halting attacks on US forces and rival armed groups.
Senior group members said the truce, announced after allegations Sadr's gunmen were involved in bloody clashes in the shrine city of Karbala, aimed to rein in wayward factions operating beyond the cleric's writ.
"The attempt is to reorganise the militia but not to dismantle it. It is also an effort to root out the rogue elements," one aide said.
Sadr, known as a "sayyid" or descendant of the Prophet Mohammed, is believed to have the power to command war or peace in Iraq but has had a long absence from the public eye.
In the past year a number of senior Mahdi leaders have allegedly broken away from the main group and the US military claims many are running their own independent cells and carrying out sectarian attacks against the Sunnis.
Since Basra province was handed over to Iraqi control by British forces in December, it has become the theatre of a bitter turf war between the Mahdi Army and its Shiite foes.
These include the Badr organisation allied to the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (SIIC) of powerful politician Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, and the smaller Shiite party, Fadhila.
The Mahdi Army, created after the 2003 US-led invasion, became the most active and feared armed Shiite group, blamed by Washington for death-squad killings of thousands of Sunnis.
It is named after Al-Mahdi Al-Montazar (the Awaited Mahdi) -- the revered 12th imam who disappeared in 907.
Initially underestimated by US and Iraqi officials, the son of revered Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr also wields massive influence in the corridors of power.
Since he returned to Iraq's turbulent political scene in May last year after disappearing from public view for seven months, Sadr has been working hard to bolster his nationalist credentials.
After throwing his weight behind Shiite politician Nuri al-Maliki in 2006, ensuring he became prime minister, Sadr ordered his six ministers to pull out of the cabinet last April.
In September it pulled out of the ruling Shiite dominated coalition, further upsetting Iraq's already fractured political landscape. However, it retains 32 MPs in the 275-seat parliament.
The cabinet walkout was in protest at the government's refusal to set a timetable for a US troop withdrawal -- something favoured by a majority of Iraqis and especially Sadr's supporters.
The cleric is idolised by millions of Shiites, especially in the shrine city of Najaf where he has his headquarters and the Baghdad slums of Sadr City.
"(Sadr) has become the authentic spokesman for a significant portion of traditionally disenfranchised Iraqis who, far from benefiting from the former regime's ouster, remained marginalised from the emerging political order," the International Crisis Group said.
burs/hkb/txw
Herald Sun
AUSTRALIA
Cleric's bastion attacked
FIERCE fighting erupted early yesterday between Iraq's security forces and the Mehdi Army of radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in Basra.
An Iraqi military official said Iraqi forces had launched an attack to "cleanse" the southern city of armed groups.
In a hail of gunfire and mortar blasts, security forces entered Al-Tamiyah neighbourhood, a bastion of the Mehdi Army at 5am.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was in Basra to oversee the sweep in Iraq's second largest city.
"Basra city is experiencing a brutal campaign from internal and external groups targeting its security and stability by killing scientific, social and spiritual personalities as well as innocent men and women," Mr Maliki said.
"This is accompanied by the smuggling of oil, weapons and drugs. The outlaws are finding support from within the state and outside.
This is why Basra has become a city where civilians cannot even secure their lives and property," he said.
The fighting came as a report said Iraq was more stable than Afghanistan with less violence.
The report published yesterday by British-based Jane's Information Group ranked Afghanistan as the third most-unstable area after the Gaza Strip and West Bank, and Somalia. Iraq was at No. 22.
Jane's judged the US to be only the 22nd most stable of 235 countries or territories -- just below Australia and Portugal -- due to international drug trafficking and the proliferation of small arms within US society.
-AFP
Al-Ahram - Egypt - ASSORTED ARTICLES - Chronicle of a disaster - Iraq
Al-Ahram – Egypt - ASSORTED ARTICLES - Chronicle of a disaster - Iraq
Issue 889 Front Page
Al-Ahram Weekly Online
20 - 26 March 2008
Issue No. 889
Special
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875
Chronicle of a disaster
With the fifth anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq, Saad Abdel-Wahab looks at its covert beginnings and many dark moments
On 20 March 2003, explosions were heard in Baghdad. There is now evidence that various Special Forces and Special Operations troops crossed the border into Iraq well before the air war started to guide strike aircraft in air attacks. United States President George W Bush announced that he had ordered an "attack of opportunity" against targets in Iraq. When this word was given the troops on standby crossed the border into Iraq. These troops were led by the 4th bomb disposal unit which at the time had three RAF Regiment airmen from 15 squadron on a tour.
Before the invasion, many observers had expected a lengthy campaign of aerial bombing before any ground action, taking as examples the 1991 Arab Gulf War or the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. In practice, US plans envisioned simultaneous air and ground assaults to decapitate the Iraqi forces as fast as possible, attempting to bypass Iraqi military units and cities in most cases. The assumption was that superior mobility and coordination of US and UK forces would allow them to attack the heart of the Iraqi command structure and destroy it in a short time, and that this would minimise civilian deaths and damage to infrastructure. It was expected that the elimination of the leadership would lead to the collapse of the Iraqi forces and the government, and that much of the population would support the invaders once the government had been weakened. Occupation of cities and attacks on peripheral military units were viewed as undesirable distractions.
Following Turkey's decision to deny any official use of its territory, the US was forced to abandon a planned simultaneous attack from north and south, so the primary bases for the invasion were in Kuwait and other Arab Gulf nations. One result of this was that one of the divisions intended for the invasion was forced to relocate and was unable to take part in the invasion until well into the war. Many observers felt that the US devoted insufficient numbers of troops to the invasion, and that this (combined with the failure to occupy cities) put them at a major disadvantage in achieving security and order throughout the country when local support failed to meet expectations.
Initially, the US 1st Marine Division fought through the Rumaila oil fields, and moved north to Nasariyah -- a moderate-sized, Shia- dominated city with important strategic significance as a major road junction close to the nearby Talil Airfield. The US Army 3rd Infantry Division defeated Iraqi forces entrenched in and around the airfield and bypassed the city to the west. On 23 March, US Marines and Special Forces units pressed the attack in and around Nasariyah. During the battle an Air Force A-10 was involved in a case of fratricide that resulted in the death of six marines. Because of Nasariyah's strategic position as a road junction, significant gridlock occurred as US forces moving north converged on the city's surrounding highways. With Nasariyah and Tallil Airfield secured, US forces gained an important logistical centre in southern Iraq, establishing FOB/EAF Jalibah, some 10 miles outside of Nasariyah through which additional troops and supplies were brought. The 101st Airborne Division continued their attack north behind the 3rd Infantry Division, and the 82nd Airborne Division began to consolidate in and around Tallil airfield for further operations. By 27-28 March, a severe sand storm slowed the US advance as the 3rd Infantry Division fought on the outskirts of Najaf and Kufa, with heavy fighting in and around the bridge next to the town of Kifl before moving north towards Karbala.
In the south, the British 7 Armoured Brigade fought their way into Iraq's second-largest city, Basra, on 6 April, coming under constant attack by regulars and fedayeen of Saddam, while the British Red Devils cleared the old quarter of the city that was inaccessible to vehicles. Entering Basra had only been achieved after two weeks of conflict, which included the biggest tank battle by British forces since World War II when the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards destroyed 14 Iraqi tanks on 27 March. Elements of 1 (UK) Armoured Division began to advance north towards US positions around Al-Amarah on 9 April. Pre-existing electrical and water shortages continued throughout the conflict and looting began as Iraqi forces collapsed. While British forces began working with local Iraqi police to enforce order, Royal Electrical Mechanical Engineers and Royal Engineers of the British Army rapidly set up and repaired dockyard facilities to allow humanitarian aid to arrive from ships arriving in the port city of Um Qasr.
After a rapid initial advance, the first major pause occurred near Karbala city. There, US Army elements met resistance from Iraqi troops defending cities and key bridges along the Euphrates River. These forces threatened to interdict supply routes as US forces moved north. By the end of March, elements of the 82nd Airborne Division augmented with a mechanised infantry battalion task force of the US 1st Armoured Division began diversionary assaults in and around the city of Samawah to divert Iraqi forces that may have otherwise threatened the extended rear of the US and UK's lead elements. Meanwhile, the US 101st Airborne Division supported by an armoured battalion task force of the 1st Armoured division and infantry elements of the US 1st Marine Division with US Marine and Army air support, attacked and secured the cities of Najaf and Karbala to prevent any Iraqi counterattacks from the east. These attacks effectively protected the eastern flank and rear of the 3rd Infantry Division, which allowed the western flank of the invasion to resupply and continue its advance north through the Karbala Gap and on towards Baghdad, where US Marine and British forces had already begun a preliminary assault on the outskirts of the city.
In the north, the 10th Special Forces Group (10th SFG) had the mission of aiding the Kurdish parties, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the Kurdistan Democratic Party, de facto rulers of Iraqi Kurdistan since 1991, and employed them against the 13 Iraqi Divisions located near Kirkuk and Mosul. Turkey had officially prohibited any US troops from using their bases or airspace, so lead elements of the 10th SFG had to make a detour infiltration; their flight was supposed to take four hours but instead took 10. Hours after the first of such flights, Turkey did allow the use of its air space and the rest of the 10th SFG infiltrated in. The preliminary mission was to destroy the base of the Kurdish terrorist group Ansar Al-Islam, believed to be linked to Al-Qaeda. Concurrent and follow-on missions involved attacking and pinning down Iraqi forces in the north, thus preventing their deployment to the southern front and the main effort of the invasion.
On 26 March, the 173rd Airborne Brigade augmented the invasion's northern front by parachuting into northern Iraq onto Bashur Airfield, controlled at the time by elements of 10th SFG and Kurdish peshmerga. The fall of Kirkuk on 10 April to the 10th SFG and Kurdish peshmerga precipitated the 173rd's planned assault, preventing the unit's involvement in combat against Iraqi forces during the invasion. The successful invasion of Kirkuk came as a result of approximately two weeks of fighting that included the Battle of the Green Line (the unofficial border of the Kurdish autonomous zone) and the subsequent Battle of Kani Domlan Ridge (the ridge line running northwest to southeast of Kirkuk), the latter fought exclusively by 3rd Battalion, 10th SFG and Kurdish peshmerga against the Iraqi I Corps. The 173rd would eventually take responsibility for Kirkuk days later, becoming involved in the counterinsurgency fight and remaining there until redeploying a year later.
Three weeks into the invasion, US forces moved into Baghdad. Initial plans were for armoured units to surround the city and gradually move in, forcing Iraqi armour and ground units to cluster into a central pocket in the city, and then attack with air and artillery forces. This plan soon became unnecessary, as an initial engagement of armour units south of the city saw most of the Republican Guard's armour assets destroyed and much of the southern outskirts of the city occupied. On 5 April TF 1-64 Armour of the US Army executed a raid, later called the "Thunder Run", to test remaining Iraqi defences, with 29 tanks and 14 Bradley Armoured Fighting Vehicles rushing from a staging base to the Baghdad airport. They met heavy resistance, including many Al-Qaeda suicide attacks, but were successful in reaching the airport.Two days later another thunder run was launched by the US army into the palaces of Saddam Hussein, which they seized along with the government offices of central Baghdad. Within hours of the palace seizure, and television coverage of this spreading through Iraq, US forces ordered Iraqi forces within Baghdad to surrender, or the city would face a full-scale assault. Iraqi government officials had either disappeared or had conceded defeat, and on 9 April 2003, Baghdad was formally occupied by US forces and the power of Saddam Hussein was declared ended. Much of Baghdad remained unsecured, however, and fighting continued within the city and its outskirts well into the period of occupation. Saddam had vanished, and his whereabouts were unknown. Many Iraqis celebrated the downfall of Saddam by vandalising the many portraits and statues of him together with other pieces of his personality cult.
One widely publicised event was the dramatic toppling of a large statue of Saddam in Baghdad's Firdos Square in central Baghdad. This attracted considerable media coverage at the time. What virtually the entire media ignored was that this was a staged PSYOPS event. As Staff Sergeant Brian Plesich reported in On Point: The United States Army in Operation Iraqi Freedom, "the Marine Corps colonel in the area saw the Saddam statue as a target of opportunity and decided that the statue must come down. Since we were right there, we chimed in with some loudspeaker support to let the Iraqis know what it was we were attempting to do. Somehow along the way, somebody had gotten the idea to put a group of Iraqi kids onto the wrecker that was to pull the statue down. While the wrecker was pulling the statue down, there were Iraqi children crawling all over it. Finally they brought the statue down."
The fall of Baghdad saw the outbreak of regional violence throughout the country, as Iraqi tribes and cities began to fight each other over old grudges. The Iraqi cities of Al-Kut and Nasariyah declared war upon each other immediately following the fall of Baghdad to establish dominance in the new country, and the US and its allies quickly found themselves embroiled in a potential civil war. US forces ordered the cities to cease hostilities immediately, and explained that Baghdad would remain the capital of the new Iraqi government. Nasariyah responded favourably and quickly backed down, however Al-Kut placed snipers on the main roadways into town, with orders that invading forces were not to enter the city. After several minor skirmishes, the snipers were removed, but tensions and violence between regional, city, tribal, and familial groups continued into the occupation period.
General Tommy Franks assumed control of Iraq as the supreme commander of occupation forces. Shortly after the sudden collapse of the defence of Baghdad, rumours were circulating in Iraq and elsewhere that there had been a deal struck wherein the US had bribed key members of the Iraqi military elite or the Baath Party itself to stand down. In May 2003, General Franks retired, and confirmed in an interview with Defense Week that the US had paid Iraqi military leaders to defect. The extent of the defections and their effect on the war are unclear.
US troops promptly began searching for the key members of Saddam's government. These individuals were identified by a variety of means, most famously through sets of most-wanted Iraqi playing cards.
On 22 July during a raid by the US 101st Airborne Division and men from Task Force 20, Saddam's sons Uday and Qusay, and one of his grandsons were killed. Saddam was captured on 13 December by the US Army's 4th Infantry Division and members of Task Force 121 during Operation Red Dawn in Al-Dour near Tikrit city.
In the north, Kurdish forces opposed to Saddam had already occupied for years an autonomous area. With the assistance of US Special Forces and air strikes, they were able to rout the Iraqi units near them and to occupy oil-rich Kirkuk on 10 April. US special forces had also been involved in the extreme south of Iraq, attempting to occupy key roads to Syria and air bases. In one case two armoured platoons were used to convince Iraqi leadership that an entire armoured battalion was entrenched in the west of Iraq. On 15 April, US forces took control of Tikrit, the last major outpost in central Iraq, with an attack led by the Marines' Task Force Tripoli. About a week later the Marines were relieved by the Army's 4th Infantry Division.
Looting took place in the days following the invasion. Similar looting occurred for two weeks following the 1989 US invasion of Panama. Looting in Iraq was left uncontrolled, however, by the decision of (American viceroy) Paul Bremer to de-Baathify Iraq's government and by his decision not to use Iraq's military to maintain order, though Bremer writes in My Year in Iraq that there was no military to disband. Peter Galbraith wrote in The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War, that he also found no active Iraqi military, but that Bremer "had never been there, did not speak Arabic, had no experience dealing with a country emerging from war, and had never been involved with nation- building."
The National Museum of Iraq was among the looted sites. The assertion that US forces did not guard the museum because they were guarding the Ministry of Petroleum and Ministry of Interior is apparently true. According to US officials the "reality of the situation on the ground" was that hospitals, water plants, and ministries with vital intelligence needed security more than other sites. There were only enough US troops on the ground to guard a certain number of the many sites that ideally needed protection, and so, apparently, some "hard choices" were made. Also, it was reported that many trucks of Iraqi gold and $1.6 billion of bricks of US cash were seized by US forces.
The FBI was soon called into Iraq to track down the stolen items. It was found that the initial claims of looting of substantial portions of the collection were heavily exaggerated. Initial reports claimed a near-total looting of the museum, estimated at upward of 170,000 pieces. The most recent estimate places the number of looted pieces at around 15,000. Over 5,000 looted items have since been recovered. There has been speculation that some objects still missing were not taken by looters after the war, but were taken by Saddam or his entourage before or during the fighting. There have also been reports that early looters had keys to vaults that held rarer pieces, and some have speculated as to the premeditated systematic removal of key artifacts.
The National Museum of Iraq was only one of many museums and sites of cultural significance that were affected by the war. Many in the arts and antiquities communities briefed policymakers before the need to secure Iraqi museums. Despite the looting being lighter than initially feared, the cultural loss of items from ancient summer is significant.
More serious for the post-war state of Iraq was the looting of cached weaponry and ordnance which fuelled the subsequent insurgency. As many as 250,000 tonnes of explosives were unaccounted for by October 2004. Disputes within the US Defense Department led to delays in the post-invasion assessment and protection of Iraqi nuclear facilities. Tuwaitha, the Iraqi site most scrutinised by UN inspectors since 1991, was left unguarded and may have been looted.
Zainab Bahrani, professor of Ancient Near Eastern Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University, reported that a helicopter landing pad was constructed in the heart of the ancient city of Babylon, and "removed layers of archaeological earth from the site. The daily flights of the helicopters rattle the ancient walls and the winds created by their rotors blast sand against the fragile bricks. When my colleague at the site, Maryam Moussa, and I asked military personnel in charge that the helipad be shut down, the response was that it had to remain open for security reasons, for the safety of the troops."
Bahrani also reported that in the summer of 2004, "the wall of the Temple of Nabu and the roof of the Temple of Ninmah, both sixth century BC, collapsed as a result of the movement of helicopters." Electrical power is scarce in post-war Iraq, Bahrani reported, and some fragile artifacts, including the Ottoman Archive, would not survive the loss of refrigeration.
The USS Abraham Lincoln returned to port carrying its Mission Accomplished banner. On 1 May, Bush landed on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, in a Lockheed S-3 Viking, where he gave a speech announcing the end of major combat operations in the Iraq war. Bush's landing was criticised by opponents as an overly theatrical and expensive stunt. Clearly visible in the background was a banner stating "Mission Accomplished". The banner, made by White House staff and supplied by request of the US Navy, was criticised as premature, especially as sectarian violence and American casualties continued to increase since the official end of hostilities. The White House subsequently released a statement that the sign and Bush's visit referred to the initial invasion of Iraq and disputing the claim of theatrics. The speech itself noted: "We have difficult work to do in Iraq. We are bringing order to parts of that country that remain dangerous."
Iraq was subsequently marked by violent conflict between US-led soldiers and forces described by the occupiers as insurgents. The ongoing resistance in Iraq was concentrated in, but not limited to, an area referred to by Western media and the occupying forces as the Sunni triangle and Baghdad. This resistance may be described as guerrilla warfare. The tactics in use include mortars, suicide bombers, roadside bombs, small arms fire, improvised explosive devices (IEDs), and handheld anti-tank grenade-launchers (RPGs), as well as sabotage against the petroleum infrastructure. There are also accusations, questioned by some, about attacks on the power and water infrastructure. There is evidence that some of the resistance was organised, perhaps by the fedayeen of Saddam or Baath loyalists, religious radicals, Iraqis angered by the occupation or foreign fighters.
Many experts now consider Iraq to have degenerated into civil war, although the Bush administration disputes the accuracy of the term. According to a 2006 study conducted by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, more than 601,000 Iraqis have died in the violence following the 2003 invasion.
While estimates of the number of casualties during the invasion in Iraq vary widely, the majority of deaths and injuries occurred after US President Bush declared the end of "major combat operations" on 1 May 2003. According to CNN, the US government reported that 139 American military personnel were killed before then, while more than 3,000 have been killed since. Estimates of civilian casualties are more variable than those for military personnel. According to Iraq Body Count, a group that relies on Western press reports to measure civilian casualties, approximately 7,500 civilians were killed during the invasion phase, while more than 60,000 civilians have been killed as of April 2007.
In November 2006 Iraq's Health Minister Ali Al-Shemari said that since the March 2003 invasion between 100,000 and 150,000 Iraqis have been killed. Al-Shemari based his figure on an estimate of 100 bodies per day brought to morgues and hospitals -- such a calculation would come out closer to 130,000 in total.
The Lancet surveys of mortality before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, conducted by researchers at Johns Hopkins University, estimates much higher civilian casualties, but does not differentiate between the invasion phase (March- May 2003) and the occupation phase (post May 2003). The Lancet survey estimates that over 650,000 Iraqi civilians have died as a result of the conflict, with the vast majority of these deaths occurring after May 2003.
A September 2007 estimate by ORB (Opinion Research Business), an independent British polling agency, suggests that the total Iraqi violent death toll due to the Iraq War since the US-led invasion is more than 1.2 million (1,220,580). Although higher than the 2006 Lancet estimate, these results, which were based on a survey of 1,499 adults in Iraq in August 2007, are approximately consistent with the figures that were published in the Lancet study.
Over 4.7 million Iraqis, more than 16 per cent of the Iraqi population, have lost their homes and become refugees since 2003. As of June 2007, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimated that 2.2 million Iraqis had been displaced to neighbouring countries, and 2.5 million were displaced internally, with nearly 100,000 Iraqis fleeing to Syria and Jordan each month. Roughly 40 per cent of Iraq's middle class is believed to have fled, the UN said. Most are fleeing systematic persecution and have no desire to return. All kinds of people, from university professors to bakers, have been targeted by militias, insurgents and criminals. An estimated 331 school teachers were slain in the first four months of 2006, according to Human Rights Watch, and at least 2,000 Iraqi doctors have been killed and 250 kidnapped since the US invasion.
The UN reports that although Christians comprise less than five per cent of Iraq's population, they make up nearly 40 per cent of the refugees fleeing Iraq. More than 50 per cent of Iraqi Christians have already left the country. In the 16th century, Christians composed half the population of Iraq. In 1987, the last Iraqi census counted 1.4 million Christians. But as the war has radicalised Islamic sensibilities, Christians' total numbers slumped to about 500,000, of whom 250,000 live in Baghdad. Furthermore, the Mandaean and Yazidi communities are at the risk of elimination due to ethnic cleansing by Islamic extremists. As many as 110,000 Iraqis could be targeted as collaborators because of their work for coalition forces.
The US invasion of Iraq was the most widely and closely reported war in military history. Television network coverage was largely pro-war and viewers were six times more likely to see a pro- war source than an anti-war one. The New York Times ran a number of articles describing Saddam's attempts to build weapons of mass destruction. The article "US says Hussein intensifies quest for A-bomb parts" would be discredited, leading the New York Times to issue a public statement admitting it was not as rigorous as it should have been.
At the start of the war in March, as many as 775 reporters and photographers were travelling as embedded journalists. These reporters signed contracts with the military that limited what they were allowed to report on. When asked why the military decided to embed journalists with the troops, Lieutenant Colonel Rick Long of the US Marine Corps replied, "Frankly, our job is to win the war. Part of that is information warfare. So we are going to attempt to dominate the information environment."
A September 2003 poll revealed that 70 per cent of Americans believed there was a link between Saddam and the attacks of 9/11. Eighty per cent of Fox viewers were found to hold at least one misperception about the invasion, compared to 23 per cent of PBS viewers. Ted Turner, founder of CNN, said that Rupert Murdoch was using Fox News to advocate an invasion. Critics have argued that this statistic is indicative of misleading coverage by the US media since viewers in other countries were less likely to have these misconceptions.
Opponents of military intervention in Iraq have attacked the decision to invade Iraq along a number of lines, including calling into question the evidence used to justify the war, arguing for continued diplomacy, challenging the war's legality, suggesting that the US had other more pressing security priorities, (i.e., Afghanistan and North Korea) and predicting that the war would destabilise the Middle East region. The breadth and depth of the criticism was particularly notable in comparison with the first Gulf War, which met with considerably less domestic and international opposition, although the geopolitical situation had evolved since the last decade.
One of the main questions in the lead-up to the war was whether the UN Security Council would authorise military intervention in Iraq. When it became increasingly clear that UN authorisation would require significant further weapons inspections, and that the US and Britain planned to invade Iraq regardless, many criticised their effort as unwise, immoral and illegal. Robin Cook, then the leader of the British House of Commons and a former foreign secretary, resigned from Tony Blair's cabinet in protest over Britain's decision to invade without the authorisation of a UN resolution. Cook said then: "In principle I believe it is wrong to embark on military action without broad international support. In practice I believe it is against Britain's interests to create a precedent for unilateral military action."
Criticisms about the evidence used to justify the war notwithstanding, many opponents of military intervention objected because a diplomatic solution would be preferable, and war should be reserved as a truly last resort. This position was exemplified by French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, who responded to US Secretary of State Colin Powell's 5 February 2003 presentation to the UN Security Council by saying that, "given the choice between military intervention and an inspections regime that is inadequate because of a failure to cooperate on Iraq's part, we must choose the decisive reinforcement of the means of inspections."
Besides arguing that Iraq was not the top strategic priority in the war on terror or in the Middle East, critics of the war also suggested that it could potentially destabilise the surrounding region. Prominent among such critics was Brent Scowcroft, who served as National Security Adviser to ex-president George H W Bush. In a Wall Street Journal editorial "Don't attack Saddam", Scowcroft wrote that, "possibly the most dire consequences would be the effect in the region" where there could be "an explosion of outrage against us" that "could well destabilise Arab regimes" and "could even swell the ranks of the terrorists".
C a p t i o n : Clockwise from top: the aerial bombardment of Baghdad on 20 March 2003; men and boys gather under a giant mural of Saddam Hussein to watch the British 1st Battalion the Parachute Regiment search a military compound in Al-Dayr north of Basra; Hans Blix; Mohamed E-Baradei; the notorious vice president of Iraq's ruling Revolution Command Council, Ezzat Ibrahim; and former British premier Tony Blair and US President George W Bush
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Balance sheet
* Over one million Iraqis have died.
A study published in January 2008 by Opinion Business Research (ORB), in collaboration with the Independent Institute for Administration and Civil Society Studies, an independent Iraqi institution, estimated that 1.2 million Iraqis have been killed since 2003. The study confirms the assessment made by two previous studies conducted by the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University and published in the medical journal The Lancet. All studies consider the actions of occupation forces as the main cause of violent death in Iraq.
* The US Department of Defense confirms the deaths of 3,988 American soldiers to date, while 175 UK soldiers and 133 soldiers of other nationalities have also died. More than 1,001 contractors have been killed since 2003, and an estimated 8,019 members of the Iraqi Security Forces have also been killed.
* At least 15,000 Iraqis have disappeared since 2003, based on research done by local NGOs.
* Over 4.7 million Iraqis have been displaced or made refugees.
The US occupation has created the largest and fastest growing global refugee crisis in post-World War II history, inclusive of the Palestinian exodus. At least 2.5 million Iraqis have been internally displaced while 2.2 million more are refugees in neighbouring countries. The Iraqi Red Crescent Society reports that in October 2007 alone 368,479 Iraqis were uprooted from their homes inside Iraq, while an estimated 60,000 Iraqis flee the country to neighbouring states on a monthly basis.
* 50,000 Iraqi refugees have been forced into prostitution.
* 2,000 Iraqi doctors have been killed since 2003, most of which were assassinated.
* At least 345 Iraqi academics have been assassinated since 2003.
* At least 210 Iraqi lawyers and judges have been killed since 2003.
* At least 282 Iraqi journalists have been killed since 2003.
* Since the US invasion, 43 per cent of Iraqis live in abject poverty on less than $1 a day; 60-70 per cent of the workforce is unemployed.
* More than six million Iraqis are in need of urgent humanitarian aid, while four million are in urgent need of food aid.
* Child malnutrition has increased exponentially: half of Iraq's children under five are now malnourished.
* Child mortality has increased 150 per cent since 2003.
* Seventy per cent of the population is denied adequate access to drinking water while 80 per cent lack basic sanitation.
* Of Iraq's 180 large hospitals, 90 per cent lack essential supplies.
* More than 800,000 schoolchildren have stopped attending primary school and only half who complete primary school continue their education. More than 220,000 refugee children in neighbouring countries are denied the right to education.
* All public services in Iraq have collapsed. Already in 2006, 40 per cent of Iraq's skilled personnel had left the country.
* The war is costing $720 million per day, or $500,000 per minute.
* Attacks by the Iraqi resistance on US forces run to more than 5,500 per month.
source: The B Russell s Tribunal, www.brusselstribunal.org
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Resisting the invasion
The following is a review of the resistance and armed groups in Iraq:
First, the main Sunni resistance groups that primarily target the US occupation:
1. The Iraqi National Islamic Resistance (the 1920 Revolution Brigades) : It emerged for the first time on 16 July 2003. Its declared aim is to liberate Iraqi territory from foreign military and political occupation and to establish a liberated and independent Iraqi state on Islamic bases. It launches armed attacks against the US forces. The attacks primarily are concentrated in the area west of Baghdad, in the regions of Abu Ghraib, Khan Dari and Falluja. It has other activities in the governorates of Ninwi, Diyali, and Al-Anbar. The group usually takes into consideration the opinions of a number of Sunni authorities in Iraq.
The group's statements, in which it claims responsibility for its operations against the US occupation, are usually distributed at the gates of the mosques after the Friday prayers.
The most prominent operations of the group during that period were the shooting down of a helicopter in the Abu Ghraib region by the Al-Zubayr Bin Al-Awwam Brigade on 1 August 2004, and the shooting down of a Chinook helicopter in the Al-Nuaymiyah region, near Falluja, by the Martyr Nur Al-Din Brigade on 9 August 2004.
Hamas Iraq is a Sunni militia group which broke off from the 1920 Revolution Brigade in March 2007. The group has claimed to have released videos of its attack on US troops.
2. The National Front for the Liberation of Iraq : The front includes 10 resistance groups. It was formed days after the occupation of Iraq in April 2003. It consists of nationalists and Islamists. Its activities are concentrated in Irbil and Kirkuk in northern Iraq; in Falluja, Samaraa, and Tikrit in central Iraq, and in Basra and Babil governorates in the south, in addition to Diyali governorate in the east and is much weaker than the 1920 Revolution Brigades.
3. The Iraqi Resistance Islamic Front (JAMI) : The front is the newest Sunni resistance group to fight the US occupation. It includes a number of small resistance factions that formed a coalition. Its political and jihad programme is based on the illegality of the occupation. Its activities against the occupation forces are concentrated in the two governorates of Ninwi and Diyali. It announced its existence for the first time on 30 May 2004.
In its statements, JAMI warns against Jewish-Zionist conspiracies in Iraq. According to statements issued by the front, JAMI's military wing, the Salah-Al-Din and Sayf-Allah Al-Maslul Brigades, has carried out dozens of operations against the US occupation forces. The most prominent of these operations were in Ninwi Governorate. These operations included the shelling of the occupation command headquarters and the semi-daily shelling of the Mosul airport. Furthermore, JAMI targets the members of US intelligence and kills them in the Al-Faysaliyah area in Mosul and also in the Governorate of Diyali.
4. Other factions : There are other factions that claim responsibility for limited military operations against the US forces. However, some of these factions have joined larger brigades that are more active and more experienced in fighting. These factions include:
Hamzah Faction : A Sunni group that appeared for the first time on 10 October 2003 in Falluja and called for the release of a local sheikh known as Sheikh Jamal Nidal, who was arrested by the US forces.
Iraqi Liberation Army : The first appearance of this group was on 15 July 2003. It warned foreign countries against sending troops to Iraq and pledged to attack those troops if they were sent.
Awakening and Holy War : A group of Arab Sunni mujahideen active in Falluja. It filmed an operation on videotape and sent the tape to Iranian television on 7 July 2003. On the tape the group said that Saddam Hussein and the United States were two sides of the same coin. The group said that it carried out operations against the US occupation in Falluja and other cities.
The White Banners : A group of local Arab Sunni mujahideen active in the Sunni triangle and probably in other areas. Originally, they were opposed to Saddam Hussein, and in alliance with the Muslim Youths and Mohamed's Army. The group criticised the bombing of the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad. So far, there is no information about their operations.
Al-Haqq Army : There is not much information about this group, which consists of Arab Sunni Muslims, it has some nationalistic tendencies, and it is not loyal to Saddam Hussein.
5. Baathist factions : These factions are loyal to the Baath Party and the previous regime. They do not constitute a significant proportion of the actual resistance in Iraq. Their activities are more or less restricted to financing resistance operations. The factions that still exist secretly in the Iraqi arena include:
Al-Awdah (The Return) : This faction is concentrated in northern Iraq -- Samaraa, Tikrit, Al-Dur, and Mosul. It consists of members of the former intelligence apparatus.
Saddam's Fedayeen : The faction was formed by the Saddam Hussein regime before the US invasion. Now, it is rumoured that many of its members have abandoned their loyalty to Saddam and have joined Islamic and national groups on the side of the 11 September Revolutionary Group and The Serpent's Head Movement.
Second, Shia resistance against the occupation:
Al-Sadr group : The Mahdi Army is considered the only militia experiment to emerge after the occupation. In July 2003, Shia leader Muqtada Al-Sadr announced the formation of the Mahdi Army, but not as a force directed against the occupation. Within a short period, Al-Sadr gathered between 10,000 and 15,000 well-trained youths, the majority of whom were from the poor of the Al-Sadr City, Al-Shulah and the southern cities.
Recent events include the closure of Al-Sadr's Al-Hawzah newspaper in March 2004; the arrest of Al-Sadr assistant Mustafa Al-Yaqubi against a background of suspicions about his involvement in the killing of Imam Abdul-Majid Al-Khui, and finally the writ to arrest Muqtada Al-Sadr in April on charges of assassinating Al-Khui inside the Al-Haydari Mosque in Najaf on 10 April 2003. They put the Mahdi Army in confrontation with the occupation forces in Baghdad and the southern governorates.
The greatest confrontation between this militia and the occupation forces erupted in Najaf in August 2004. The confrontation continued for nearly three weeks, and it ended with the signing of a ceasefire agreement between the two sides. Observers believe these confrontations bestowed upon the Al-Sadr tendency the mark of an armed resistance to the occupation.
Imam Ali Ibn Abi Talib Jihadi Brigades : This Shia group appeared for the first time on 12 October 2003. It vowed to kill the soldiers of any country sending its troops to support the coalition forces, and threatened to transfer the battleground to the territories of such countries if they were to send troops. The group also threatened to assassinate all members of the Interim Governing Council and any Iraqi cooperating with the coalition forces. The group also announced that Najaf and Karbala were the battlegrounds in which it would target the US forces.
Third: Factions that adopt abductions and killing:
In addition to the groups resisting occupation, other armed groups have emerged and resorted to operations of abducting and killing foreigners both to terrorise the enemy and as a political pressure card to achieve their specific demands. This was what happened when Philippine President Gloria Macapagol Arroyo decided to withdraw the Philippine forces acting under US command in Iraq after the abduction of her compatriot Angelo del Cruz on 7 July 2004 and his release at a later time.
The most prominent of these groups are:
Assadullah Brigades : The group said in a statement, number 50, "the mujahid is entitled to capture any infidel that enters Iraq, whether he works for a construction company or in any other job, because he could be a warrior, and the mujahid has the right to kill him or take him as a prisoner."
The activities of this group are concentrated in Baghdad and its suburbs. The group detained the third most senior diplomat at the Egyptian Embassy to Iraq, Mohamed Mamdouh Hilmi Qotb, in July 2004 in response to statements by Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif, who announced that Egypt was prepared to offer its security expertise to the interim Iraqi government. The diplomat was released after nearly a week.
Islamic Retaliation Movement : It abducted the US Marine of Lebanese origin, Wasif Ali Hassun, on 19 July 2004, and then released him.
Islamic Anger Brigades : This group abducted 15 Lebanese in June 2004 and then released them, with the exception of Hussein Ulayan, an employee of a communications company, whom it killed.
Khaled Ibn Al-Walid Brigades and Iraq's Martyrs Brigades : They are believed to be the ones who abducted Italian journalist Enzo Bladoni in August 2004 and killed him.
The Black Banners Group : A battalion of the Secret Islamic Army. The group abducted three Indians, two Kenyans, and an Egyptian working for a Kuwaiti company operating in Iraq. The aim was to compel the company to stop its activities in Iraq. The hostages were later released.
The Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi Group and The Al-Tawhid wa Al-Jihad Group are both headed by Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi.
The Islamic Army in Iraq : A secret organisation that adopts the ideology of Al-Qaeda. The organisation abducted Iranian Consul Feredion Jahani and two French journalists, Georges Malbrunot and Christian Chesnot.
Ansar Al-Sunna Movement : The movement abducted 12 Nepalese on 23 August 2004 and killed them.
The last four groups are clearly intellectually close to the beliefs and thinking of Al-Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden.
The first case of videotaped beheading was that of US national Nicholas Berg in May 2004. The Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi group claimed responsibility. After that, the Al-Tawhid wa Al-Jihad Group killed South Korean Kim Il, who was working for a Korean company providing the US Army with military installations. Following that, the abducting of hostages escalated in Iraq. Some of the hostages were killed, and others were released. The total number of hostages killed so far is: two Italians, two US nationals, two Pakistanis, one Egyptian, one Turk, one Lebanese, one Bulgarian, one South Korean and 12 Nepalese.
This is not the final word on the resistance, which keeps changing every day, with new groups forming, others lapsing and dividing into smaller groups.
Based on a report by Global Policy Forum
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Milestones:
2002
September : US President George W Bush tells sceptical world leaders at a UN General Assembly session to confront the "grave and gathering danger" of Iraq or stand aside as the US acts. In the same month British Prime Minister Tony Blair publishes a dossier on Iraq's military capability.
November : UN weapons inspectors return to Iraq backed by a UN resolution which threatens serious consequences if Iraq is in "material breach" of its terms.
March : Chief weapons inspector Hans Blix reports that Iraq has accelerated its cooperation but says inspectors need more time to verify Iraq's compliance.
2003
17 March : UK's ambassador to the UN says the diplomatic process on Iraq has ended; arms inspectors evacuate; US President George W Bush gives Saddam Hussein and his sons 48 hours to leave Iraq or face war.
20 March : American missiles hit targets in Baghdad, marking the start of a US-led campaign to topple Saddam Hussein. In the following days US and British ground troops enter Iraq from the south.
9 April : US forces advance into central Baghdad. Saddam Hussein's grip on the city is broken. In the following days Kurdish fighters and US forces take control of the northern cities of Kirkuk and Mosul. There is looting in Baghdad and elsewhere.
April : US lists 55 most-wanted members of the former regime in the form of a deck of cards. Former deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz is taken into custody.
May : UN Security Council backs US-led administration in Iraq and lifts economic sanctions. US administrator abolishes Baath Party and institutions of former regime.
July : US-appointed Governing Council meets for the first time. Commander of US forces says his troops face low-intensity guerrilla-style war. Saddam's sons Uday and Qusay killed in gun battle in Mosul.
August : Deadly bomb attacks on Jordanian Embassy and UN headquarters in Baghdad. Saddam's cousin Ali Hassan Al-Majid, or Chemical Ali, captured. Car bomb in Najaf kills 125 including Shia leader Ayatollah Mohamed Baqir Al-Hakim.
14 December : Saddam Hussein captured in Tikrit.
2004
February : More than 100 killed in Irbil in suicide attacks on offices of main Kurdish factions.
March : Suicide bombers attack Shia pilgrims in Karbala and Baghdad, killing 140 people.
April-May : Shia militias loyal to radical cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr take on coalition forces.
Hundreds are reported killed in fighting during the month-long US military siege of the Sunni Muslim city of Falluja.
June : US hands sovereignty to interim government headed by Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.
Saddam Hussein transferred to Iraqi legal custody.
August : Fighting in Najaf between US forces and Shia militia of radical cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr.
November : Major US-led offensive against insurgents in Falluja.
2005
30 January : An estimated eight million people vote in elections for a Transitional National Assembly. The Shia United Iraqi Alliance wins a majority of assembly seats. Kurdish parties come second.
28 February : At least 114 people are killed by a massive car bomb in Hilla, south of Baghdad. It is the worst single such incident since the US-led invasion.
April : Amid escalating violence, parliament selects Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani as president. Ibrahim Jaafari, a Shia, is named as prime minister.
May onwards : Surge in car bombings, bomb explosions and shootings: Iraqi ministries put the civilian death toll for May at 672, up from 364 in April.
June : Massoud Barzani is sworn in as regional president of Iraqi Kurdistan.
July : Study compiled by the non-governmental Iraq Body Count organisation estimates that nearly 25,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed since the 2003 US-led invasion.
August : Draft constitution is endorsed by Shia and Kurdish negotiators, but not by Sunni representatives.
More than 1,000 people are killed during a stampede at a Shia ceremony in Baghdad.
September : 182 people are killed in attacks in Baghdad, including a car bomb attack on a group of workers in a mainly-Shia district.
October : Saddam Hussein goes on trial on charges of crimes against humanity.
Voters approve a new constitution, which aims to create an Islamic federal democracy.
15 December : Iraqis vote for the first, full-term government and parliament since the US-led invasion.
2006
20 January : Shia-led United Iraqi Alliance emerges as the winner of December's parliamentary elections, but fails to gain an absolute majority.
February onwards : A bomb attack on an important Shia shrine in Samaraa unleashes a wave of sectarian violence in which hundreds of people are killed.
22 April : Newly re-elected President Talabani asks Shia compromise candidate Jawad Al-Maliki to form a new government. The move ends four months of political deadlock.
May and June : An average of more than 100 civilians per day are killed in violence in Iraq, the UN says.
7 June : Al-Qaeda leader in Iraq Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi is killed in an air strike.
September : A much-anticipated ceremony to transfer operational command from US-led forces to Iraq's new army is postponed.
November : Saddam Hussein is found guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced to death.
Iraq and Syria restore diplomatic relations after nearly a quarter century.
More than 200 die in car bombings in the mostly Shia area of Sadr City in Baghdad. An indefinite curfew is imposed after what is considered the worst attack on the capital since the US-led invasion of 2003.
December : Iraq Study Group report making recommendations to President Bush on future policy in Iraq describes the situation as grave and deteriorating. It warns of the prospect of a slide towards chaos, triggering the collapse of the government and a humanitarian catastrophe.
30 December : Saddam Hussein is executed by hanging.
2007
January : US President Bush announces a new Iraq strategy; thousands more US troops will be dispatched to shore up security in Baghdad.
Barzan Ibrahim (Saddam Hussein's half-brother) and Awad Hamed Al-Bandar, former head of the Revolutionary Court, are executed by hanging.
UN says more than 34,000 civilians were killed in violence during 2006; the figure surpasses official Iraqi estimates threefold.
February : Bomb in Baghdad's Sadriya market kills more than 130 people. It is the worst single bombing since 2003.
March : Insurgents detonate three trucks with toxic chlorine gas in Falluja and Ramadi, injuring hundreds.
Former Vice-President Taha Yassin Ramadan is executed on the fourth anniversary of the US-led invasion.
12 April : Bomb blast rocks parliament, killing an MP.
18 April : Bombings in Baghdad kill nearly 200 people in the worst day of violence since a US- led security drive began in the capital in February.
May : Leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq Abu Ayoub Al-Masri is reported killed.
July : President Bush says only limited military and political progress in Iraq following his decision to reinforce US troops levels there.
August : The main Sunni Arab political bloc in Iraq, the Iraqi Accordance Front, withdraws from the cabinet, plunging the government into crisis.
Truck and car bombs hit two villages of Yazidi Kurds, killing at least 250 people -- the deadliest attack since 2003.
Kurdish and Shia leaders form an alliance to support Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki's government but fail to bring in Sunni leaders.
September : Controversy over private security contractors after Blackwater security guards allegedly fire at civilians, killing 17.
October : Turkish parliament gives the go-ahead for military operations in Iraq in pursuit of Kurdish rebels. Turkey comes under international pressure to avoid an invasion.
The number of violent civilian and military deaths continues to drop, as does the frequency of rocket attacks.
Karbala, the mainly Shia province, becomes the 18th province to be transferred to local control.
December : Turkey launches an air raid on fighters from the Kurdish PKK movement inside Iraq.
Britain hands over security of Basra province to Iraqi forces, effectively marking the end of nearly five years of British control of southern Iraq.
2008
January : Parliament passes legislation allowing former officials from Saddam Hussein's Baath Party to return to public life.
February : Suicide bombings at pet markets in Baghdad kill more than 50 people in the deadliest attacks in the capital in months.
Turkish forces mount a ground offensive against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq.
March : Unprecedented two-day visit by Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to Iraq.
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Messages to the people
On 20 March 2003, at 5.30am, the American army and its allies bombarded Baghdad. The war on Iraq had officially started. Blood and ink would flow in abundance. Five years later, with that war still ongoing, we, as writers, are sending a message to the people. We appeal to each and every one of you, to make you think.
In February 2003, more than a million protesters gathered both in Rome and London, two of the thousands of mass demonstrations worldwide against the impending war
The bottom line
The invasion of Iraq was a criminal act.
The occupation of Iraq remains a criminal act.
The British government under Blair and the United States administration are war criminals.
It's as simple as that.
Harold Pinter, Nobel Prize in literature 2005
Our duty: unity and solidarity
The future of peace, justice, democracy, progress and human civilisation depends on the unity in struggle of the oppressed and aggressed in Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon, on the Arab and international solidarity with them, and on their victory. Their enemy is the same: Imperialism and Zionism and their local allies.
Our duty is to incite them into unity. Our duty is to be in solidarity with all of them. The horrors of the five years of American occupation of Iraq remind us of this every day.
Abdul Ilah Albayaty, French-Iraqi political analyst
Their only prize
Now we know the exact costs of war and occupation. It has cost the United States and its allies $3 trillion to kill 1.2 million Iraqis, wound a million more and drive 2.2 million Iraqis out of their country as refugees. The human cost of this war would, if some other country were doing it, be labelled genocide. The leaders who went to war would be tried as war criminals, but this is the war of "Western civilisation" against Islamo-Barbarians, Islamo-fascists and all the other names given to the new enemy. Abusing, defaming and killing Muslims is now calmly accepted in Euro-American culture. The people who do this have institutionalised the judeocide of World War II as the only universal crime. As long as you denounce that crime, you can commit your own crimes today. This is the world we live in. This is the world of double standards. Why the surprise when those under fire refuse to accept these standards. A modest proposal: perhaps the Nobel Prize Committee should institute a new award -- the Nobel Prize for War Crimes.
Tariq Ali, historian, novelist and filmmaker
My statement
The United States hasn't won a war where anyone fights back since 1945.
How long will it take for the rest of the world to prevail upon the consciousness of the US public to force their deranged leaders to withdraw from the bloodbath they have initiated?
Saul Landau, Author, journalist, poet and activist
In Sum
In the middle of the 19th century, the murder of China deserved to be called The Opium War. Victoria, the drug trafficking queen, forced dope on the country in the name of the freedom to trade.
At the beginning of the 21st century, the murder of Iraq deserved to be called The Oil War. George W Bush, more pipeline than president, crushed the country in the name of the freedom to lie.
Eduardo Galeano,Uruguayan writer and historian
First genocide of the 21st century
The American ongoing crime of invading and occupying Iraq since 2003 is the most notorious and comprehensive political and military aggression in modern history, mocking all the moral codes of humanity and international law. While all the world, including the American administration itself, was completely aware that all the pretexts for invading Iraq (weapons of mass destruction, links to terrorism, or for liberation) were false, and in spite of the fact that the international community opposed that aggression and protested against it, the Bush administration ignored everything and everybody and invaded one of the oldest civilisations of the world. Iraq, 6000 years of history, the cradle of civilisations, where the first letter was written, the first law was set, the first university was built, the first money was created, the first irrigation system was established, the first poetry was written ...
What the occupation authorities and their Iraqi agents did during the last five years of controlling Iraq, and what they are still doing now, is flagrantly criminal. Iraq has been subject to systematic destruction. The state was dismantled, institutions were abolished, the educational, health, economic, security and infrastructure systems were broken; even the cultural and social fabrics were torn apart. So far 1.2 million Iraqi civilians have been killed, more than 4.7 million are refugees outside Iraq or displaced inside (1.5 million of them are children), two million orphans and more widows made, and hundreds of thousands detained, exposed to the worst kinds of torture and humiliation (including 10,000 women) and without any kind of legal procedures...
According to the UN, eight million Iraqis are in need of emergency assistance. Seventy per cent of Iraqis are without access to safe supplies of drinking water. Electricity supply is beneath pre-invasion levels (in many areas electricity simply does not exist). Forty-three per cent of the population lives on less than half a dollar per day. Living standards in Iraq are getting worse despite contracts of over $20 billion being paid to companies to rebuild Iraq; they were swallowed by governmental corruption. Iraq is now third on the list of the most corrupted states in the world. Even the so-called Iraqi government admits that unemployment is between 60 and 70 per cent. Child malnutrition has increased from 19 per cent during the 1990s "economic sanctions period", before the invasion, to 28 per cent today.
But worst than all these hardships is the dark future that is awaiting Iraq. The old colonial divide and rule strategy is fully responsible for all sectarian divisions. The longer the occupying armies remain, the greater the chances of the country breaking up. The occupation created official security bodies out of sectarian militias, giving them the authority to kill or to support and help those who kill, kidnap and displace on sectarian bases. On the other hand, there are 180,000 mercenaries (apart from 170,000 official American troops) who are committing different kinds of killings, assassinations and explosions in civilian areas in order to instigate and augment sectarian conflict.
The American administration is working with its Iraqi agents in the so-called Iraqi government to sign a long-term treaty that will control Iraq politically, economically (including petroleum) and militarily for decades to come. This treaty is illegal as it is signed by two illegal parties: the occupying power, which by international humanitarian law has no right to sign any such agreement, and the so-called Iraqi government which was created under and by the occupation.
The only way to stop all these crimes, to hold American and other criminals responsible, and to start the real rebuilding of Iraq is to support the Iraqi people in its resistance to the occupation, to mobilise the world community against the occupation, and to end the world's silence and indifference to the first genocide of the 21st century.
Eman Khammas, Iraqi journalist, activist and now refugee
Permanent planetary emergency
After 9/11 the US invaded Afghanistan. But at the moment they could close in on Bin Laden, they withdrew. Why? Instead, they started an illegal invasion of Iraq, which was a catastrophe foretold. Why?
The neo-con ideology still provides a key to the answer. The book Present Dangers spelled it out. After the Cold War, America needed a new, big enemy, for having no enemy is bad for both politics and the military industrial complex. As soon as it was established in 1996, the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) -- with Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz as co-signatories -- asked the president in several letters for a war against Iraq.
In 2000, the PNAC published its report Rebuilding America's Defences, in which it asked for a major increase in military spending to "fight and decisively win multiple simultaneous major theatre wars". They also said that the unresolved conflict with Saddam Hussein provided an alibi for a permanent military presence in the Gulf. They were well aware that the revolution in military affairs they wished for was unlikely without, "some catalysing catastrophic event, like a new Pearl Harbour" (it is still on their website). So 9/11 was a godsend. The Bush government took up this new neo-con vision and declared the "war on terror".
With the strategy of allowing Osama and the Taliban in Afghanistan regain ground, and spreading Al-Qaeda to Iraq and angering the entire region and radicalising factions of Islam everywhere, they got what they needed: the ideal, big, if not monstrous, post-Cold War enemy. On the way they fulfilled the hidden agenda of Israel to get rid of Iraq, and by privatising warfare they gave a huge push to the development of a new military and paramilitary industry (what Naomi Klein has called the "disaster capitalism complex"). They destroyed the Iraqi state, seized its assets and its petroleum, got permanent bases and built the biggest embassy ever.
So as far as I can see, the neo-con agenda was realised, almost all according to plan. That it cost more than 1.2 million Iraqi lives and 4.7 million refugees and an entire population maimed, under-fed or traumatised (which makes it the biggest manmade disaster on the planet at this moment): too bad. Of course, there are conflicting opinions and interests; public opinion has turned against the war and the situation on the ground is called "messy", but as long as permanent war is assured, all is well.
All is well for the thinktanks that concocted the project for a new century of American dominance, or "pre-eminence" as they call it, by unleashing and then fighting "the present dangers": the ubiquitous terrorist as both enemy within and enemy without; the best enemy there is, for it gives you both the right to declare war and a state of emergency (from the Patriot Act to Guantanamo and beyond, up to antiterrorism laws in Europe). For that is what this war on terror is and remains: a consciously created planetary state of emergency. The war in Iraq is part of that plan for permanent war and permanent emergency.
Lieven De Cauter, philosopher, initiator of the B Russell s Tribunal, Belgium
On estimates
More than four million refugees.
At a rough estimation.
Four million, rough.
How rough, would you say?
Hilde Keteleer, poet, translator, critic
Let us support the people of Iraq
The fifth anniversary of the occupation of Iraq is also an anniversary of resistance by a National Liberation Movement of indigenous Iraqis against a foreign and oppressive occupation and its collaborators.
Brave Iraqis who are fighting with all necessary means to dislodge the United States, its allies and its collaborators from their occupation of Iraq are members of a National Liberation Movement. They may be referred to in English, although they have adopted no formal name, as the "Iraqi Liberation Movement", or ILM.
The ILM consists of all Iraqis who are struggling by peaceful or violent means to remove the occupying powers from the territory of the sovereign state of Iraq. The ILM is entitled to use all necessary means to end the occupation. It is so entitled because it represents the legitimate authority and will of the people of Iraq.
The recognition of national liberation movements is not new. National liberation movements are recognised as the consequence of the right of self-determination. This right is guaranteed in the very first common articles of the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; two of the most widely ratified human rights instruments in the world.
The UN Charter also refers to the right to self-determination in its first article. Article 73 of the charter then defines self- determination as "self-government" taking "due account of the political aspirations of the peoples" and assisting "them in the progressive development of their free political institutions, according to the particular circumstances of each territory and its peoples and their varying stages of development." Although this was intended to apply primarily to peoples under colonialism, it must be read in conjunction with Article 2, Paragraph 4 of the charter, which protects people from the illegal use of force.
The expression of self-determination in the context of colonialism was also expressed in UN General Assembly Resolution 1514 -- the Declaration on Granting Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples -- as well as Resolution 1541(XV) adopted a few days later. These resolutions recognised the right of self-determination as a right of peoples who are subject to colonial rule to decide on their own form of government. A slightly more general recognition can be found in the Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Cooperation among States in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations. As this latter document indicates, it is also part of customary international law, something confirmed by the UN Resolution 2625 adopted by consensus on 24 October 1970.
A National Liberation Movement is, renowned international jurist Ian Brownlie tells us, entitled to "conclude binding international agreements"; to the "rights and obligations set by the generally recognised principles of international humanitarian law"; and "to participate in the proceedings of the United Nations as observers". It is also entitled to the respect and support of every state and individual in the international community.
By providing whatever support is within one's abilities, each one of us contribute to liberating the Iraqi people. We may suffer consequences for our support of the brave Iraqis fighting against the most deadly killing machine American lives and money can buy, but whatever domestic laws say, such supporters -- governments or individuals -- are acting in accordance with international law. Something that the occupiers of Iraq have failed to do and our suffering is much less than that of Iraqis who gallantly face an army too cowardly to respect basic international law.
Let us remember with courage this fifth anniversary of this struggle to end the occupation of Iraq as the anniversary of the "first Iraqi Intifada" against the injustice brought upon Iraqis by foreign and oppressive occupiers and their collaborators. Let us support the people of Iraq.
Curtis F J Doebbler, international human rights lawyer
The US is weak
The United States is the weakest entity on earth. It proves it in its violence. It is a system that produces cadavers and voluntary and involuntary executioners: 3.2 million Iraqis dead since 1990 and 300 million Americans rendered complicit -- directly or by way to the so-called development surrounding them -- with the international crime of genocide. It is a system that simply couldn't function were truth suddenly substituted for lies.
How long will its façade continue when none among us is certain of escaping its prisons? Will it take a further $1 trillion to realise that Baghdad will never be subjugated? How long will the American people remain ignorant of the fact that in Iraq the United States faces the force of a social unity that has been a geopolitical reality for 5,000 years?
To future historians, the United States will command none of the respect it likes to think it has. Co-existence practically does not exist in US dictionaries. And its war on terror is just a name for killing or repressing everyone who at a gut level rejects servitude. It even creates phantoms to keep the whole masquerade going. And in their name it kills it own people as well as others.
In Iraq there is one reality: a defeated occupation and its collaborators, and the Iraqi people. We must support the Iraqi people in its resistance to occupation, for to do anything else leaves us siding with genocide. The latter we should prosecute.
Ian Douglas, International Initiative to Prosecute US Genocide in Iraq
Just get out!
In January 2003, just weeks before our illegal invasion, Nelson Mandela made the following statement: "... All Bush wants is Iraqi oil. Why [is the US] not seeking to confiscate weapons of mass destruction from [its] ally Israel? ... What I am condemning is that one power, with a president who has no foresight, who cannot think properly, is now wanting to plunge the world into a holocaust."
Well, as the banner on the aircraft carrier read, Mission Accomplished ... for the holocaust of ethnic cleansing in Palestine has extended to Iraq, COMPLIMENTS of our illegal and brutal occupation.
Were there weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? NO!
Were there ties between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda? NO!
Did the Iraqi people ever pose a threat to us? NO!
Have Sunnis and Shias been killing each other for thousands of years? NO!
How do we know our "leaders" are lying to us? Their lips are moving. In Iraq, as in Latin America in the 1980s, the bloodshed began when American CIA-operations were set in motion.
In reality, while there are over 2.2 million Iraqi refugees living mainly in Syria and Jordan, there is NO mass bloodshed and torture in these neighbouring countries. The genocide just happens to be occurring inside Iraq, where the American CIA, the Israeli Mossad, and the most powerful military in the world are running operations. It's simple: invasion and occupation are illegal, and there must be one consistent standard for justice and the law.
No timetables -- just IMMEDIATE WITHDRAWAL.
No conditions -- just IMMEDIATE WITHDRAWAL.
No more stoplossing soldiers -- just IMMEDIATE WITHDRAWAL.
Iraq needs only one thing from America -- just IMMEDIATE WITHDRAWAL.
Worldwide, we the peacemakers are the majority. Whatever obstacles we encounter in the struggle, they are nothing compared to what the Iraqi people are facing everyday. We are here. We have to push forward. And we cannot stop until our government's crimes do.
Dahlia Wasfi, Global Exchange -- Iraq/USA
Nine hundred and thirty five lies
Nine hundred and thirty five lies. Two groups that keep track of the media counted them. The Bush gang lied 935 times between 11 September 2001 and 19 March 2003, to justify the invasion of Iraq. Bush lied 259 times. The biggest lie was that Iraq had "weapons of mass destruction". A close second was that Saddam Hussein worked with Al-Qaeda. Why is the number of lies important? There were 935 opportunities to question the liars. The 935 lies are proof that the entire US ruling class is responsible for the conspiracy to wage war on Iraq.
The millions who marched against the war knew these were lies. You did not have to be Einstein. Nor Lenin. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz led the war conspiracy. But the entire ruling class and its institutions colluded. The Pentagon went along willingly. The State Department presented the false statements to the United Nations. Congress voted the funds.
No major corporate media questioned or challenged these lies. The influential New York Times and the Washington Post supported the war drive. Nor did the media allow war opponents to expose the lies.
In January and February 2003, mass mobilisations tried to stop the war. No major ruling class politicians or business figures participated in these protests. Not Kennedy, not Brzezinski, not Soros. The vast majority of the super-rich ruling class wanted the profits and plunder from a quick US victory in Iraq. The military-industrial complex bid for contracts. The strategists wanted US control of the world's energy sources. If they saw any dangers, they kept quiet.
But they made a big mistake. They were blinded by greed. Five years later, there is no "quick victory". There is much suffering by Iraqis, yes. But the occupation is a debacle for US imperialism. They made the same mistake Hitler made invading the Soviet Union in 1940, and that Washington made sending its army to Vietnam in 1967. The US rulers underestimated the Iraqis' willingness to sacrifice and fight rather than submit.
Now the liars are exposed. We must thank the heroic Iraqi resistance for exposing them. And we must dedicate ourselves to fight. Fight to end the occupation of Iraq. Fight to depose the entire ruling class that made this war.
John Catalinotto, International Action Centre
These and other statements were gathered by the B Russell s Tribunal www.brusselstribunal.org in cooperation with the Passa Porta House of Literature, Belgium.
C a p t i o n : In February 2003, more than a million protesters gathered both in Rome and London, two of the thousands of mass demonstrations worldwide against the impending war
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online : Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2008/889/sc5.htm
Issue 889 Front Page
Al-Ahram Weekly Online
20 - 26 March 2008
Issue No. 889
Special
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875
Chronicle of a disaster
With the fifth anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq, Saad Abdel-Wahab looks at its covert beginnings and many dark moments
On 20 March 2003, explosions were heard in Baghdad. There is now evidence that various Special Forces and Special Operations troops crossed the border into Iraq well before the air war started to guide strike aircraft in air attacks. United States President George W Bush announced that he had ordered an "attack of opportunity" against targets in Iraq. When this word was given the troops on standby crossed the border into Iraq. These troops were led by the 4th bomb disposal unit which at the time had three RAF Regiment airmen from 15 squadron on a tour.
Before the invasion, many observers had expected a lengthy campaign of aerial bombing before any ground action, taking as examples the 1991 Arab Gulf War or the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. In practice, US plans envisioned simultaneous air and ground assaults to decapitate the Iraqi forces as fast as possible, attempting to bypass Iraqi military units and cities in most cases. The assumption was that superior mobility and coordination of US and UK forces would allow them to attack the heart of the Iraqi command structure and destroy it in a short time, and that this would minimise civilian deaths and damage to infrastructure. It was expected that the elimination of the leadership would lead to the collapse of the Iraqi forces and the government, and that much of the population would support the invaders once the government had been weakened. Occupation of cities and attacks on peripheral military units were viewed as undesirable distractions.
Following Turkey's decision to deny any official use of its territory, the US was forced to abandon a planned simultaneous attack from north and south, so the primary bases for the invasion were in Kuwait and other Arab Gulf nations. One result of this was that one of the divisions intended for the invasion was forced to relocate and was unable to take part in the invasion until well into the war. Many observers felt that the US devoted insufficient numbers of troops to the invasion, and that this (combined with the failure to occupy cities) put them at a major disadvantage in achieving security and order throughout the country when local support failed to meet expectations.
Initially, the US 1st Marine Division fought through the Rumaila oil fields, and moved north to Nasariyah -- a moderate-sized, Shia- dominated city with important strategic significance as a major road junction close to the nearby Talil Airfield. The US Army 3rd Infantry Division defeated Iraqi forces entrenched in and around the airfield and bypassed the city to the west. On 23 March, US Marines and Special Forces units pressed the attack in and around Nasariyah. During the battle an Air Force A-10 was involved in a case of fratricide that resulted in the death of six marines. Because of Nasariyah's strategic position as a road junction, significant gridlock occurred as US forces moving north converged on the city's surrounding highways. With Nasariyah and Tallil Airfield secured, US forces gained an important logistical centre in southern Iraq, establishing FOB/EAF Jalibah, some 10 miles outside of Nasariyah through which additional troops and supplies were brought. The 101st Airborne Division continued their attack north behind the 3rd Infantry Division, and the 82nd Airborne Division began to consolidate in and around Tallil airfield for further operations. By 27-28 March, a severe sand storm slowed the US advance as the 3rd Infantry Division fought on the outskirts of Najaf and Kufa, with heavy fighting in and around the bridge next to the town of Kifl before moving north towards Karbala.
In the south, the British 7 Armoured Brigade fought their way into Iraq's second-largest city, Basra, on 6 April, coming under constant attack by regulars and fedayeen of Saddam, while the British Red Devils cleared the old quarter of the city that was inaccessible to vehicles. Entering Basra had only been achieved after two weeks of conflict, which included the biggest tank battle by British forces since World War II when the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards destroyed 14 Iraqi tanks on 27 March. Elements of 1 (UK) Armoured Division began to advance north towards US positions around Al-Amarah on 9 April. Pre-existing electrical and water shortages continued throughout the conflict and looting began as Iraqi forces collapsed. While British forces began working with local Iraqi police to enforce order, Royal Electrical Mechanical Engineers and Royal Engineers of the British Army rapidly set up and repaired dockyard facilities to allow humanitarian aid to arrive from ships arriving in the port city of Um Qasr.
After a rapid initial advance, the first major pause occurred near Karbala city. There, US Army elements met resistance from Iraqi troops defending cities and key bridges along the Euphrates River. These forces threatened to interdict supply routes as US forces moved north. By the end of March, elements of the 82nd Airborne Division augmented with a mechanised infantry battalion task force of the US 1st Armoured Division began diversionary assaults in and around the city of Samawah to divert Iraqi forces that may have otherwise threatened the extended rear of the US and UK's lead elements. Meanwhile, the US 101st Airborne Division supported by an armoured battalion task force of the 1st Armoured division and infantry elements of the US 1st Marine Division with US Marine and Army air support, attacked and secured the cities of Najaf and Karbala to prevent any Iraqi counterattacks from the east. These attacks effectively protected the eastern flank and rear of the 3rd Infantry Division, which allowed the western flank of the invasion to resupply and continue its advance north through the Karbala Gap and on towards Baghdad, where US Marine and British forces had already begun a preliminary assault on the outskirts of the city.
In the north, the 10th Special Forces Group (10th SFG) had the mission of aiding the Kurdish parties, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the Kurdistan Democratic Party, de facto rulers of Iraqi Kurdistan since 1991, and employed them against the 13 Iraqi Divisions located near Kirkuk and Mosul. Turkey had officially prohibited any US troops from using their bases or airspace, so lead elements of the 10th SFG had to make a detour infiltration; their flight was supposed to take four hours but instead took 10. Hours after the first of such flights, Turkey did allow the use of its air space and the rest of the 10th SFG infiltrated in. The preliminary mission was to destroy the base of the Kurdish terrorist group Ansar Al-Islam, believed to be linked to Al-Qaeda. Concurrent and follow-on missions involved attacking and pinning down Iraqi forces in the north, thus preventing their deployment to the southern front and the main effort of the invasion.
On 26 March, the 173rd Airborne Brigade augmented the invasion's northern front by parachuting into northern Iraq onto Bashur Airfield, controlled at the time by elements of 10th SFG and Kurdish peshmerga. The fall of Kirkuk on 10 April to the 10th SFG and Kurdish peshmerga precipitated the 173rd's planned assault, preventing the unit's involvement in combat against Iraqi forces during the invasion. The successful invasion of Kirkuk came as a result of approximately two weeks of fighting that included the Battle of the Green Line (the unofficial border of the Kurdish autonomous zone) and the subsequent Battle of Kani Domlan Ridge (the ridge line running northwest to southeast of Kirkuk), the latter fought exclusively by 3rd Battalion, 10th SFG and Kurdish peshmerga against the Iraqi I Corps. The 173rd would eventually take responsibility for Kirkuk days later, becoming involved in the counterinsurgency fight and remaining there until redeploying a year later.
Three weeks into the invasion, US forces moved into Baghdad. Initial plans were for armoured units to surround the city and gradually move in, forcing Iraqi armour and ground units to cluster into a central pocket in the city, and then attack with air and artillery forces. This plan soon became unnecessary, as an initial engagement of armour units south of the city saw most of the Republican Guard's armour assets destroyed and much of the southern outskirts of the city occupied. On 5 April TF 1-64 Armour of the US Army executed a raid, later called the "Thunder Run", to test remaining Iraqi defences, with 29 tanks and 14 Bradley Armoured Fighting Vehicles rushing from a staging base to the Baghdad airport. They met heavy resistance, including many Al-Qaeda suicide attacks, but were successful in reaching the airport.Two days later another thunder run was launched by the US army into the palaces of Saddam Hussein, which they seized along with the government offices of central Baghdad. Within hours of the palace seizure, and television coverage of this spreading through Iraq, US forces ordered Iraqi forces within Baghdad to surrender, or the city would face a full-scale assault. Iraqi government officials had either disappeared or had conceded defeat, and on 9 April 2003, Baghdad was formally occupied by US forces and the power of Saddam Hussein was declared ended. Much of Baghdad remained unsecured, however, and fighting continued within the city and its outskirts well into the period of occupation. Saddam had vanished, and his whereabouts were unknown. Many Iraqis celebrated the downfall of Saddam by vandalising the many portraits and statues of him together with other pieces of his personality cult.
One widely publicised event was the dramatic toppling of a large statue of Saddam in Baghdad's Firdos Square in central Baghdad. This attracted considerable media coverage at the time. What virtually the entire media ignored was that this was a staged PSYOPS event. As Staff Sergeant Brian Plesich reported in On Point: The United States Army in Operation Iraqi Freedom, "the Marine Corps colonel in the area saw the Saddam statue as a target of opportunity and decided that the statue must come down. Since we were right there, we chimed in with some loudspeaker support to let the Iraqis know what it was we were attempting to do. Somehow along the way, somebody had gotten the idea to put a group of Iraqi kids onto the wrecker that was to pull the statue down. While the wrecker was pulling the statue down, there were Iraqi children crawling all over it. Finally they brought the statue down."
The fall of Baghdad saw the outbreak of regional violence throughout the country, as Iraqi tribes and cities began to fight each other over old grudges. The Iraqi cities of Al-Kut and Nasariyah declared war upon each other immediately following the fall of Baghdad to establish dominance in the new country, and the US and its allies quickly found themselves embroiled in a potential civil war. US forces ordered the cities to cease hostilities immediately, and explained that Baghdad would remain the capital of the new Iraqi government. Nasariyah responded favourably and quickly backed down, however Al-Kut placed snipers on the main roadways into town, with orders that invading forces were not to enter the city. After several minor skirmishes, the snipers were removed, but tensions and violence between regional, city, tribal, and familial groups continued into the occupation period.
General Tommy Franks assumed control of Iraq as the supreme commander of occupation forces. Shortly after the sudden collapse of the defence of Baghdad, rumours were circulating in Iraq and elsewhere that there had been a deal struck wherein the US had bribed key members of the Iraqi military elite or the Baath Party itself to stand down. In May 2003, General Franks retired, and confirmed in an interview with Defense Week that the US had paid Iraqi military leaders to defect. The extent of the defections and their effect on the war are unclear.
US troops promptly began searching for the key members of Saddam's government. These individuals were identified by a variety of means, most famously through sets of most-wanted Iraqi playing cards.
On 22 July during a raid by the US 101st Airborne Division and men from Task Force 20, Saddam's sons Uday and Qusay, and one of his grandsons were killed. Saddam was captured on 13 December by the US Army's 4th Infantry Division and members of Task Force 121 during Operation Red Dawn in Al-Dour near Tikrit city.
In the north, Kurdish forces opposed to Saddam had already occupied for years an autonomous area. With the assistance of US Special Forces and air strikes, they were able to rout the Iraqi units near them and to occupy oil-rich Kirkuk on 10 April. US special forces had also been involved in the extreme south of Iraq, attempting to occupy key roads to Syria and air bases. In one case two armoured platoons were used to convince Iraqi leadership that an entire armoured battalion was entrenched in the west of Iraq. On 15 April, US forces took control of Tikrit, the last major outpost in central Iraq, with an attack led by the Marines' Task Force Tripoli. About a week later the Marines were relieved by the Army's 4th Infantry Division.
Looting took place in the days following the invasion. Similar looting occurred for two weeks following the 1989 US invasion of Panama. Looting in Iraq was left uncontrolled, however, by the decision of (American viceroy) Paul Bremer to de-Baathify Iraq's government and by his decision not to use Iraq's military to maintain order, though Bremer writes in My Year in Iraq that there was no military to disband. Peter Galbraith wrote in The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War, that he also found no active Iraqi military, but that Bremer "had never been there, did not speak Arabic, had no experience dealing with a country emerging from war, and had never been involved with nation- building."
The National Museum of Iraq was among the looted sites. The assertion that US forces did not guard the museum because they were guarding the Ministry of Petroleum and Ministry of Interior is apparently true. According to US officials the "reality of the situation on the ground" was that hospitals, water plants, and ministries with vital intelligence needed security more than other sites. There were only enough US troops on the ground to guard a certain number of the many sites that ideally needed protection, and so, apparently, some "hard choices" were made. Also, it was reported that many trucks of Iraqi gold and $1.6 billion of bricks of US cash were seized by US forces.
The FBI was soon called into Iraq to track down the stolen items. It was found that the initial claims of looting of substantial portions of the collection were heavily exaggerated. Initial reports claimed a near-total looting of the museum, estimated at upward of 170,000 pieces. The most recent estimate places the number of looted pieces at around 15,000. Over 5,000 looted items have since been recovered. There has been speculation that some objects still missing were not taken by looters after the war, but were taken by Saddam or his entourage before or during the fighting. There have also been reports that early looters had keys to vaults that held rarer pieces, and some have speculated as to the premeditated systematic removal of key artifacts.
The National Museum of Iraq was only one of many museums and sites of cultural significance that were affected by the war. Many in the arts and antiquities communities briefed policymakers before the need to secure Iraqi museums. Despite the looting being lighter than initially feared, the cultural loss of items from ancient summer is significant.
More serious for the post-war state of Iraq was the looting of cached weaponry and ordnance which fuelled the subsequent insurgency. As many as 250,000 tonnes of explosives were unaccounted for by October 2004. Disputes within the US Defense Department led to delays in the post-invasion assessment and protection of Iraqi nuclear facilities. Tuwaitha, the Iraqi site most scrutinised by UN inspectors since 1991, was left unguarded and may have been looted.
Zainab Bahrani, professor of Ancient Near Eastern Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University, reported that a helicopter landing pad was constructed in the heart of the ancient city of Babylon, and "removed layers of archaeological earth from the site. The daily flights of the helicopters rattle the ancient walls and the winds created by their rotors blast sand against the fragile bricks. When my colleague at the site, Maryam Moussa, and I asked military personnel in charge that the helipad be shut down, the response was that it had to remain open for security reasons, for the safety of the troops."
Bahrani also reported that in the summer of 2004, "the wall of the Temple of Nabu and the roof of the Temple of Ninmah, both sixth century BC, collapsed as a result of the movement of helicopters." Electrical power is scarce in post-war Iraq, Bahrani reported, and some fragile artifacts, including the Ottoman Archive, would not survive the loss of refrigeration.
The USS Abraham Lincoln returned to port carrying its Mission Accomplished banner. On 1 May, Bush landed on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, in a Lockheed S-3 Viking, where he gave a speech announcing the end of major combat operations in the Iraq war. Bush's landing was criticised by opponents as an overly theatrical and expensive stunt. Clearly visible in the background was a banner stating "Mission Accomplished". The banner, made by White House staff and supplied by request of the US Navy, was criticised as premature, especially as sectarian violence and American casualties continued to increase since the official end of hostilities. The White House subsequently released a statement that the sign and Bush's visit referred to the initial invasion of Iraq and disputing the claim of theatrics. The speech itself noted: "We have difficult work to do in Iraq. We are bringing order to parts of that country that remain dangerous."
Iraq was subsequently marked by violent conflict between US-led soldiers and forces described by the occupiers as insurgents. The ongoing resistance in Iraq was concentrated in, but not limited to, an area referred to by Western media and the occupying forces as the Sunni triangle and Baghdad. This resistance may be described as guerrilla warfare. The tactics in use include mortars, suicide bombers, roadside bombs, small arms fire, improvised explosive devices (IEDs), and handheld anti-tank grenade-launchers (RPGs), as well as sabotage against the petroleum infrastructure. There are also accusations, questioned by some, about attacks on the power and water infrastructure. There is evidence that some of the resistance was organised, perhaps by the fedayeen of Saddam or Baath loyalists, religious radicals, Iraqis angered by the occupation or foreign fighters.
Many experts now consider Iraq to have degenerated into civil war, although the Bush administration disputes the accuracy of the term. According to a 2006 study conducted by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, more than 601,000 Iraqis have died in the violence following the 2003 invasion.
While estimates of the number of casualties during the invasion in Iraq vary widely, the majority of deaths and injuries occurred after US President Bush declared the end of "major combat operations" on 1 May 2003. According to CNN, the US government reported that 139 American military personnel were killed before then, while more than 3,000 have been killed since. Estimates of civilian casualties are more variable than those for military personnel. According to Iraq Body Count, a group that relies on Western press reports to measure civilian casualties, approximately 7,500 civilians were killed during the invasion phase, while more than 60,000 civilians have been killed as of April 2007.
In November 2006 Iraq's Health Minister Ali Al-Shemari said that since the March 2003 invasion between 100,000 and 150,000 Iraqis have been killed. Al-Shemari based his figure on an estimate of 100 bodies per day brought to morgues and hospitals -- such a calculation would come out closer to 130,000 in total.
The Lancet surveys of mortality before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, conducted by researchers at Johns Hopkins University, estimates much higher civilian casualties, but does not differentiate between the invasion phase (March- May 2003) and the occupation phase (post May 2003). The Lancet survey estimates that over 650,000 Iraqi civilians have died as a result of the conflict, with the vast majority of these deaths occurring after May 2003.
A September 2007 estimate by ORB (Opinion Research Business), an independent British polling agency, suggests that the total Iraqi violent death toll due to the Iraq War since the US-led invasion is more than 1.2 million (1,220,580). Although higher than the 2006 Lancet estimate, these results, which were based on a survey of 1,499 adults in Iraq in August 2007, are approximately consistent with the figures that were published in the Lancet study.
Over 4.7 million Iraqis, more than 16 per cent of the Iraqi population, have lost their homes and become refugees since 2003. As of June 2007, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimated that 2.2 million Iraqis had been displaced to neighbouring countries, and 2.5 million were displaced internally, with nearly 100,000 Iraqis fleeing to Syria and Jordan each month. Roughly 40 per cent of Iraq's middle class is believed to have fled, the UN said. Most are fleeing systematic persecution and have no desire to return. All kinds of people, from university professors to bakers, have been targeted by militias, insurgents and criminals. An estimated 331 school teachers were slain in the first four months of 2006, according to Human Rights Watch, and at least 2,000 Iraqi doctors have been killed and 250 kidnapped since the US invasion.
The UN reports that although Christians comprise less than five per cent of Iraq's population, they make up nearly 40 per cent of the refugees fleeing Iraq. More than 50 per cent of Iraqi Christians have already left the country. In the 16th century, Christians composed half the population of Iraq. In 1987, the last Iraqi census counted 1.4 million Christians. But as the war has radicalised Islamic sensibilities, Christians' total numbers slumped to about 500,000, of whom 250,000 live in Baghdad. Furthermore, the Mandaean and Yazidi communities are at the risk of elimination due to ethnic cleansing by Islamic extremists. As many as 110,000 Iraqis could be targeted as collaborators because of their work for coalition forces.
The US invasion of Iraq was the most widely and closely reported war in military history. Television network coverage was largely pro-war and viewers were six times more likely to see a pro- war source than an anti-war one. The New York Times ran a number of articles describing Saddam's attempts to build weapons of mass destruction. The article "US says Hussein intensifies quest for A-bomb parts" would be discredited, leading the New York Times to issue a public statement admitting it was not as rigorous as it should have been.
At the start of the war in March, as many as 775 reporters and photographers were travelling as embedded journalists. These reporters signed contracts with the military that limited what they were allowed to report on. When asked why the military decided to embed journalists with the troops, Lieutenant Colonel Rick Long of the US Marine Corps replied, "Frankly, our job is to win the war. Part of that is information warfare. So we are going to attempt to dominate the information environment."
A September 2003 poll revealed that 70 per cent of Americans believed there was a link between Saddam and the attacks of 9/11. Eighty per cent of Fox viewers were found to hold at least one misperception about the invasion, compared to 23 per cent of PBS viewers. Ted Turner, founder of CNN, said that Rupert Murdoch was using Fox News to advocate an invasion. Critics have argued that this statistic is indicative of misleading coverage by the US media since viewers in other countries were less likely to have these misconceptions.
Opponents of military intervention in Iraq have attacked the decision to invade Iraq along a number of lines, including calling into question the evidence used to justify the war, arguing for continued diplomacy, challenging the war's legality, suggesting that the US had other more pressing security priorities, (i.e., Afghanistan and North Korea) and predicting that the war would destabilise the Middle East region. The breadth and depth of the criticism was particularly notable in comparison with the first Gulf War, which met with considerably less domestic and international opposition, although the geopolitical situation had evolved since the last decade.
One of the main questions in the lead-up to the war was whether the UN Security Council would authorise military intervention in Iraq. When it became increasingly clear that UN authorisation would require significant further weapons inspections, and that the US and Britain planned to invade Iraq regardless, many criticised their effort as unwise, immoral and illegal. Robin Cook, then the leader of the British House of Commons and a former foreign secretary, resigned from Tony Blair's cabinet in protest over Britain's decision to invade without the authorisation of a UN resolution. Cook said then: "In principle I believe it is wrong to embark on military action without broad international support. In practice I believe it is against Britain's interests to create a precedent for unilateral military action."
Criticisms about the evidence used to justify the war notwithstanding, many opponents of military intervention objected because a diplomatic solution would be preferable, and war should be reserved as a truly last resort. This position was exemplified by French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, who responded to US Secretary of State Colin Powell's 5 February 2003 presentation to the UN Security Council by saying that, "given the choice between military intervention and an inspections regime that is inadequate because of a failure to cooperate on Iraq's part, we must choose the decisive reinforcement of the means of inspections."
Besides arguing that Iraq was not the top strategic priority in the war on terror or in the Middle East, critics of the war also suggested that it could potentially destabilise the surrounding region. Prominent among such critics was Brent Scowcroft, who served as National Security Adviser to ex-president George H W Bush. In a Wall Street Journal editorial "Don't attack Saddam", Scowcroft wrote that, "possibly the most dire consequences would be the effect in the region" where there could be "an explosion of outrage against us" that "could well destabilise Arab regimes" and "could even swell the ranks of the terrorists".
C a p t i o n : Clockwise from top: the aerial bombardment of Baghdad on 20 March 2003; men and boys gather under a giant mural of Saddam Hussein to watch the British 1st Battalion the Parachute Regiment search a military compound in Al-Dayr north of Basra; Hans Blix; Mohamed E-Baradei; the notorious vice president of Iraq's ruling Revolution Command Council, Ezzat Ibrahim; and former British premier Tony Blair and US President George W Bush
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Balance sheet
* Over one million Iraqis have died.
A study published in January 2008 by Opinion Business Research (ORB), in collaboration with the Independent Institute for Administration and Civil Society Studies, an independent Iraqi institution, estimated that 1.2 million Iraqis have been killed since 2003. The study confirms the assessment made by two previous studies conducted by the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University and published in the medical journal The Lancet. All studies consider the actions of occupation forces as the main cause of violent death in Iraq.
* The US Department of Defense confirms the deaths of 3,988 American soldiers to date, while 175 UK soldiers and 133 soldiers of other nationalities have also died. More than 1,001 contractors have been killed since 2003, and an estimated 8,019 members of the Iraqi Security Forces have also been killed.
* At least 15,000 Iraqis have disappeared since 2003, based on research done by local NGOs.
* Over 4.7 million Iraqis have been displaced or made refugees.
The US occupation has created the largest and fastest growing global refugee crisis in post-World War II history, inclusive of the Palestinian exodus. At least 2.5 million Iraqis have been internally displaced while 2.2 million more are refugees in neighbouring countries. The Iraqi Red Crescent Society reports that in October 2007 alone 368,479 Iraqis were uprooted from their homes inside Iraq, while an estimated 60,000 Iraqis flee the country to neighbouring states on a monthly basis.
* 50,000 Iraqi refugees have been forced into prostitution.
* 2,000 Iraqi doctors have been killed since 2003, most of which were assassinated.
* At least 345 Iraqi academics have been assassinated since 2003.
* At least 210 Iraqi lawyers and judges have been killed since 2003.
* At least 282 Iraqi journalists have been killed since 2003.
* Since the US invasion, 43 per cent of Iraqis live in abject poverty on less than $1 a day; 60-70 per cent of the workforce is unemployed.
* More than six million Iraqis are in need of urgent humanitarian aid, while four million are in urgent need of food aid.
* Child malnutrition has increased exponentially: half of Iraq's children under five are now malnourished.
* Child mortality has increased 150 per cent since 2003.
* Seventy per cent of the population is denied adequate access to drinking water while 80 per cent lack basic sanitation.
* Of Iraq's 180 large hospitals, 90 per cent lack essential supplies.
* More than 800,000 schoolchildren have stopped attending primary school and only half who complete primary school continue their education. More than 220,000 refugee children in neighbouring countries are denied the right to education.
* All public services in Iraq have collapsed. Already in 2006, 40 per cent of Iraq's skilled personnel had left the country.
* The war is costing $720 million per day, or $500,000 per minute.
* Attacks by the Iraqi resistance on US forces run to more than 5,500 per month.
source: The B Russell s Tribunal, www.brusselstribunal.org
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Resisting the invasion
The following is a review of the resistance and armed groups in Iraq:
First, the main Sunni resistance groups that primarily target the US occupation:
1. The Iraqi National Islamic Resistance (the 1920 Revolution Brigades) : It emerged for the first time on 16 July 2003. Its declared aim is to liberate Iraqi territory from foreign military and political occupation and to establish a liberated and independent Iraqi state on Islamic bases. It launches armed attacks against the US forces. The attacks primarily are concentrated in the area west of Baghdad, in the regions of Abu Ghraib, Khan Dari and Falluja. It has other activities in the governorates of Ninwi, Diyali, and Al-Anbar. The group usually takes into consideration the opinions of a number of Sunni authorities in Iraq.
The group's statements, in which it claims responsibility for its operations against the US occupation, are usually distributed at the gates of the mosques after the Friday prayers.
The most prominent operations of the group during that period were the shooting down of a helicopter in the Abu Ghraib region by the Al-Zubayr Bin Al-Awwam Brigade on 1 August 2004, and the shooting down of a Chinook helicopter in the Al-Nuaymiyah region, near Falluja, by the Martyr Nur Al-Din Brigade on 9 August 2004.
Hamas Iraq is a Sunni militia group which broke off from the 1920 Revolution Brigade in March 2007. The group has claimed to have released videos of its attack on US troops.
2. The National Front for the Liberation of Iraq : The front includes 10 resistance groups. It was formed days after the occupation of Iraq in April 2003. It consists of nationalists and Islamists. Its activities are concentrated in Irbil and Kirkuk in northern Iraq; in Falluja, Samaraa, and Tikrit in central Iraq, and in Basra and Babil governorates in the south, in addition to Diyali governorate in the east and is much weaker than the 1920 Revolution Brigades.
3. The Iraqi Resistance Islamic Front (JAMI) : The front is the newest Sunni resistance group to fight the US occupation. It includes a number of small resistance factions that formed a coalition. Its political and jihad programme is based on the illegality of the occupation. Its activities against the occupation forces are concentrated in the two governorates of Ninwi and Diyali. It announced its existence for the first time on 30 May 2004.
In its statements, JAMI warns against Jewish-Zionist conspiracies in Iraq. According to statements issued by the front, JAMI's military wing, the Salah-Al-Din and Sayf-Allah Al-Maslul Brigades, has carried out dozens of operations against the US occupation forces. The most prominent of these operations were in Ninwi Governorate. These operations included the shelling of the occupation command headquarters and the semi-daily shelling of the Mosul airport. Furthermore, JAMI targets the members of US intelligence and kills them in the Al-Faysaliyah area in Mosul and also in the Governorate of Diyali.
4. Other factions : There are other factions that claim responsibility for limited military operations against the US forces. However, some of these factions have joined larger brigades that are more active and more experienced in fighting. These factions include:
Hamzah Faction : A Sunni group that appeared for the first time on 10 October 2003 in Falluja and called for the release of a local sheikh known as Sheikh Jamal Nidal, who was arrested by the US forces.
Iraqi Liberation Army : The first appearance of this group was on 15 July 2003. It warned foreign countries against sending troops to Iraq and pledged to attack those troops if they were sent.
Awakening and Holy War : A group of Arab Sunni mujahideen active in Falluja. It filmed an operation on videotape and sent the tape to Iranian television on 7 July 2003. On the tape the group said that Saddam Hussein and the United States were two sides of the same coin. The group said that it carried out operations against the US occupation in Falluja and other cities.
The White Banners : A group of local Arab Sunni mujahideen active in the Sunni triangle and probably in other areas. Originally, they were opposed to Saddam Hussein, and in alliance with the Muslim Youths and Mohamed's Army. The group criticised the bombing of the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad. So far, there is no information about their operations.
Al-Haqq Army : There is not much information about this group, which consists of Arab Sunni Muslims, it has some nationalistic tendencies, and it is not loyal to Saddam Hussein.
5. Baathist factions : These factions are loyal to the Baath Party and the previous regime. They do not constitute a significant proportion of the actual resistance in Iraq. Their activities are more or less restricted to financing resistance operations. The factions that still exist secretly in the Iraqi arena include:
Al-Awdah (The Return) : This faction is concentrated in northern Iraq -- Samaraa, Tikrit, Al-Dur, and Mosul. It consists of members of the former intelligence apparatus.
Saddam's Fedayeen : The faction was formed by the Saddam Hussein regime before the US invasion. Now, it is rumoured that many of its members have abandoned their loyalty to Saddam and have joined Islamic and national groups on the side of the 11 September Revolutionary Group and The Serpent's Head Movement.
Second, Shia resistance against the occupation:
Al-Sadr group : The Mahdi Army is considered the only militia experiment to emerge after the occupation. In July 2003, Shia leader Muqtada Al-Sadr announced the formation of the Mahdi Army, but not as a force directed against the occupation. Within a short period, Al-Sadr gathered between 10,000 and 15,000 well-trained youths, the majority of whom were from the poor of the Al-Sadr City, Al-Shulah and the southern cities.
Recent events include the closure of Al-Sadr's Al-Hawzah newspaper in March 2004; the arrest of Al-Sadr assistant Mustafa Al-Yaqubi against a background of suspicions about his involvement in the killing of Imam Abdul-Majid Al-Khui, and finally the writ to arrest Muqtada Al-Sadr in April on charges of assassinating Al-Khui inside the Al-Haydari Mosque in Najaf on 10 April 2003. They put the Mahdi Army in confrontation with the occupation forces in Baghdad and the southern governorates.
The greatest confrontation between this militia and the occupation forces erupted in Najaf in August 2004. The confrontation continued for nearly three weeks, and it ended with the signing of a ceasefire agreement between the two sides. Observers believe these confrontations bestowed upon the Al-Sadr tendency the mark of an armed resistance to the occupation.
Imam Ali Ibn Abi Talib Jihadi Brigades : This Shia group appeared for the first time on 12 October 2003. It vowed to kill the soldiers of any country sending its troops to support the coalition forces, and threatened to transfer the battleground to the territories of such countries if they were to send troops. The group also threatened to assassinate all members of the Interim Governing Council and any Iraqi cooperating with the coalition forces. The group also announced that Najaf and Karbala were the battlegrounds in which it would target the US forces.
Third: Factions that adopt abductions and killing:
In addition to the groups resisting occupation, other armed groups have emerged and resorted to operations of abducting and killing foreigners both to terrorise the enemy and as a political pressure card to achieve their specific demands. This was what happened when Philippine President Gloria Macapagol Arroyo decided to withdraw the Philippine forces acting under US command in Iraq after the abduction of her compatriot Angelo del Cruz on 7 July 2004 and his release at a later time.
The most prominent of these groups are:
Assadullah Brigades : The group said in a statement, number 50, "the mujahid is entitled to capture any infidel that enters Iraq, whether he works for a construction company or in any other job, because he could be a warrior, and the mujahid has the right to kill him or take him as a prisoner."
The activities of this group are concentrated in Baghdad and its suburbs. The group detained the third most senior diplomat at the Egyptian Embassy to Iraq, Mohamed Mamdouh Hilmi Qotb, in July 2004 in response to statements by Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif, who announced that Egypt was prepared to offer its security expertise to the interim Iraqi government. The diplomat was released after nearly a week.
Islamic Retaliation Movement : It abducted the US Marine of Lebanese origin, Wasif Ali Hassun, on 19 July 2004, and then released him.
Islamic Anger Brigades : This group abducted 15 Lebanese in June 2004 and then released them, with the exception of Hussein Ulayan, an employee of a communications company, whom it killed.
Khaled Ibn Al-Walid Brigades and Iraq's Martyrs Brigades : They are believed to be the ones who abducted Italian journalist Enzo Bladoni in August 2004 and killed him.
The Black Banners Group : A battalion of the Secret Islamic Army. The group abducted three Indians, two Kenyans, and an Egyptian working for a Kuwaiti company operating in Iraq. The aim was to compel the company to stop its activities in Iraq. The hostages were later released.
The Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi Group and The Al-Tawhid wa Al-Jihad Group are both headed by Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi.
The Islamic Army in Iraq : A secret organisation that adopts the ideology of Al-Qaeda. The organisation abducted Iranian Consul Feredion Jahani and two French journalists, Georges Malbrunot and Christian Chesnot.
Ansar Al-Sunna Movement : The movement abducted 12 Nepalese on 23 August 2004 and killed them.
The last four groups are clearly intellectually close to the beliefs and thinking of Al-Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden.
The first case of videotaped beheading was that of US national Nicholas Berg in May 2004. The Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi group claimed responsibility. After that, the Al-Tawhid wa Al-Jihad Group killed South Korean Kim Il, who was working for a Korean company providing the US Army with military installations. Following that, the abducting of hostages escalated in Iraq. Some of the hostages were killed, and others were released. The total number of hostages killed so far is: two Italians, two US nationals, two Pakistanis, one Egyptian, one Turk, one Lebanese, one Bulgarian, one South Korean and 12 Nepalese.
This is not the final word on the resistance, which keeps changing every day, with new groups forming, others lapsing and dividing into smaller groups.
Based on a report by Global Policy Forum
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Milestones:
2002
September : US President George W Bush tells sceptical world leaders at a UN General Assembly session to confront the "grave and gathering danger" of Iraq or stand aside as the US acts. In the same month British Prime Minister Tony Blair publishes a dossier on Iraq's military capability.
November : UN weapons inspectors return to Iraq backed by a UN resolution which threatens serious consequences if Iraq is in "material breach" of its terms.
March : Chief weapons inspector Hans Blix reports that Iraq has accelerated its cooperation but says inspectors need more time to verify Iraq's compliance.
2003
17 March : UK's ambassador to the UN says the diplomatic process on Iraq has ended; arms inspectors evacuate; US President George W Bush gives Saddam Hussein and his sons 48 hours to leave Iraq or face war.
20 March : American missiles hit targets in Baghdad, marking the start of a US-led campaign to topple Saddam Hussein. In the following days US and British ground troops enter Iraq from the south.
9 April : US forces advance into central Baghdad. Saddam Hussein's grip on the city is broken. In the following days Kurdish fighters and US forces take control of the northern cities of Kirkuk and Mosul. There is looting in Baghdad and elsewhere.
April : US lists 55 most-wanted members of the former regime in the form of a deck of cards. Former deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz is taken into custody.
May : UN Security Council backs US-led administration in Iraq and lifts economic sanctions. US administrator abolishes Baath Party and institutions of former regime.
July : US-appointed Governing Council meets for the first time. Commander of US forces says his troops face low-intensity guerrilla-style war. Saddam's sons Uday and Qusay killed in gun battle in Mosul.
August : Deadly bomb attacks on Jordanian Embassy and UN headquarters in Baghdad. Saddam's cousin Ali Hassan Al-Majid, or Chemical Ali, captured. Car bomb in Najaf kills 125 including Shia leader Ayatollah Mohamed Baqir Al-Hakim.
14 December : Saddam Hussein captured in Tikrit.
2004
February : More than 100 killed in Irbil in suicide attacks on offices of main Kurdish factions.
March : Suicide bombers attack Shia pilgrims in Karbala and Baghdad, killing 140 people.
April-May : Shia militias loyal to radical cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr take on coalition forces.
Hundreds are reported killed in fighting during the month-long US military siege of the Sunni Muslim city of Falluja.
June : US hands sovereignty to interim government headed by Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.
Saddam Hussein transferred to Iraqi legal custody.
August : Fighting in Najaf between US forces and Shia militia of radical cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr.
November : Major US-led offensive against insurgents in Falluja.
2005
30 January : An estimated eight million people vote in elections for a Transitional National Assembly. The Shia United Iraqi Alliance wins a majority of assembly seats. Kurdish parties come second.
28 February : At least 114 people are killed by a massive car bomb in Hilla, south of Baghdad. It is the worst single such incident since the US-led invasion.
April : Amid escalating violence, parliament selects Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani as president. Ibrahim Jaafari, a Shia, is named as prime minister.
May onwards : Surge in car bombings, bomb explosions and shootings: Iraqi ministries put the civilian death toll for May at 672, up from 364 in April.
June : Massoud Barzani is sworn in as regional president of Iraqi Kurdistan.
July : Study compiled by the non-governmental Iraq Body Count organisation estimates that nearly 25,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed since the 2003 US-led invasion.
August : Draft constitution is endorsed by Shia and Kurdish negotiators, but not by Sunni representatives.
More than 1,000 people are killed during a stampede at a Shia ceremony in Baghdad.
September : 182 people are killed in attacks in Baghdad, including a car bomb attack on a group of workers in a mainly-Shia district.
October : Saddam Hussein goes on trial on charges of crimes against humanity.
Voters approve a new constitution, which aims to create an Islamic federal democracy.
15 December : Iraqis vote for the first, full-term government and parliament since the US-led invasion.
2006
20 January : Shia-led United Iraqi Alliance emerges as the winner of December's parliamentary elections, but fails to gain an absolute majority.
February onwards : A bomb attack on an important Shia shrine in Samaraa unleashes a wave of sectarian violence in which hundreds of people are killed.
22 April : Newly re-elected President Talabani asks Shia compromise candidate Jawad Al-Maliki to form a new government. The move ends four months of political deadlock.
May and June : An average of more than 100 civilians per day are killed in violence in Iraq, the UN says.
7 June : Al-Qaeda leader in Iraq Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi is killed in an air strike.
September : A much-anticipated ceremony to transfer operational command from US-led forces to Iraq's new army is postponed.
November : Saddam Hussein is found guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced to death.
Iraq and Syria restore diplomatic relations after nearly a quarter century.
More than 200 die in car bombings in the mostly Shia area of Sadr City in Baghdad. An indefinite curfew is imposed after what is considered the worst attack on the capital since the US-led invasion of 2003.
December : Iraq Study Group report making recommendations to President Bush on future policy in Iraq describes the situation as grave and deteriorating. It warns of the prospect of a slide towards chaos, triggering the collapse of the government and a humanitarian catastrophe.
30 December : Saddam Hussein is executed by hanging.
2007
January : US President Bush announces a new Iraq strategy; thousands more US troops will be dispatched to shore up security in Baghdad.
Barzan Ibrahim (Saddam Hussein's half-brother) and Awad Hamed Al-Bandar, former head of the Revolutionary Court, are executed by hanging.
UN says more than 34,000 civilians were killed in violence during 2006; the figure surpasses official Iraqi estimates threefold.
February : Bomb in Baghdad's Sadriya market kills more than 130 people. It is the worst single bombing since 2003.
March : Insurgents detonate three trucks with toxic chlorine gas in Falluja and Ramadi, injuring hundreds.
Former Vice-President Taha Yassin Ramadan is executed on the fourth anniversary of the US-led invasion.
12 April : Bomb blast rocks parliament, killing an MP.
18 April : Bombings in Baghdad kill nearly 200 people in the worst day of violence since a US- led security drive began in the capital in February.
May : Leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq Abu Ayoub Al-Masri is reported killed.
July : President Bush says only limited military and political progress in Iraq following his decision to reinforce US troops levels there.
August : The main Sunni Arab political bloc in Iraq, the Iraqi Accordance Front, withdraws from the cabinet, plunging the government into crisis.
Truck and car bombs hit two villages of Yazidi Kurds, killing at least 250 people -- the deadliest attack since 2003.
Kurdish and Shia leaders form an alliance to support Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki's government but fail to bring in Sunni leaders.
September : Controversy over private security contractors after Blackwater security guards allegedly fire at civilians, killing 17.
October : Turkish parliament gives the go-ahead for military operations in Iraq in pursuit of Kurdish rebels. Turkey comes under international pressure to avoid an invasion.
The number of violent civilian and military deaths continues to drop, as does the frequency of rocket attacks.
Karbala, the mainly Shia province, becomes the 18th province to be transferred to local control.
December : Turkey launches an air raid on fighters from the Kurdish PKK movement inside Iraq.
Britain hands over security of Basra province to Iraqi forces, effectively marking the end of nearly five years of British control of southern Iraq.
2008
January : Parliament passes legislation allowing former officials from Saddam Hussein's Baath Party to return to public life.
February : Suicide bombings at pet markets in Baghdad kill more than 50 people in the deadliest attacks in the capital in months.
Turkish forces mount a ground offensive against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq.
March : Unprecedented two-day visit by Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to Iraq.
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Messages to the people
On 20 March 2003, at 5.30am, the American army and its allies bombarded Baghdad. The war on Iraq had officially started. Blood and ink would flow in abundance. Five years later, with that war still ongoing, we, as writers, are sending a message to the people. We appeal to each and every one of you, to make you think.
In February 2003, more than a million protesters gathered both in Rome and London, two of the thousands of mass demonstrations worldwide against the impending war
The bottom line
The invasion of Iraq was a criminal act.
The occupation of Iraq remains a criminal act.
The British government under Blair and the United States administration are war criminals.
It's as simple as that.
Harold Pinter, Nobel Prize in literature 2005
Our duty: unity and solidarity
The future of peace, justice, democracy, progress and human civilisation depends on the unity in struggle of the oppressed and aggressed in Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon, on the Arab and international solidarity with them, and on their victory. Their enemy is the same: Imperialism and Zionism and their local allies.
Our duty is to incite them into unity. Our duty is to be in solidarity with all of them. The horrors of the five years of American occupation of Iraq remind us of this every day.
Abdul Ilah Albayaty, French-Iraqi political analyst
Their only prize
Now we know the exact costs of war and occupation. It has cost the United States and its allies $3 trillion to kill 1.2 million Iraqis, wound a million more and drive 2.2 million Iraqis out of their country as refugees. The human cost of this war would, if some other country were doing it, be labelled genocide. The leaders who went to war would be tried as war criminals, but this is the war of "Western civilisation" against Islamo-Barbarians, Islamo-fascists and all the other names given to the new enemy. Abusing, defaming and killing Muslims is now calmly accepted in Euro-American culture. The people who do this have institutionalised the judeocide of World War II as the only universal crime. As long as you denounce that crime, you can commit your own crimes today. This is the world we live in. This is the world of double standards. Why the surprise when those under fire refuse to accept these standards. A modest proposal: perhaps the Nobel Prize Committee should institute a new award -- the Nobel Prize for War Crimes.
Tariq Ali, historian, novelist and filmmaker
My statement
The United States hasn't won a war where anyone fights back since 1945.
How long will it take for the rest of the world to prevail upon the consciousness of the US public to force their deranged leaders to withdraw from the bloodbath they have initiated?
Saul Landau, Author, journalist, poet and activist
In Sum
In the middle of the 19th century, the murder of China deserved to be called The Opium War. Victoria, the drug trafficking queen, forced dope on the country in the name of the freedom to trade.
At the beginning of the 21st century, the murder of Iraq deserved to be called The Oil War. George W Bush, more pipeline than president, crushed the country in the name of the freedom to lie.
Eduardo Galeano,Uruguayan writer and historian
First genocide of the 21st century
The American ongoing crime of invading and occupying Iraq since 2003 is the most notorious and comprehensive political and military aggression in modern history, mocking all the moral codes of humanity and international law. While all the world, including the American administration itself, was completely aware that all the pretexts for invading Iraq (weapons of mass destruction, links to terrorism, or for liberation) were false, and in spite of the fact that the international community opposed that aggression and protested against it, the Bush administration ignored everything and everybody and invaded one of the oldest civilisations of the world. Iraq, 6000 years of history, the cradle of civilisations, where the first letter was written, the first law was set, the first university was built, the first money was created, the first irrigation system was established, the first poetry was written ...
What the occupation authorities and their Iraqi agents did during the last five years of controlling Iraq, and what they are still doing now, is flagrantly criminal. Iraq has been subject to systematic destruction. The state was dismantled, institutions were abolished, the educational, health, economic, security and infrastructure systems were broken; even the cultural and social fabrics were torn apart. So far 1.2 million Iraqi civilians have been killed, more than 4.7 million are refugees outside Iraq or displaced inside (1.5 million of them are children), two million orphans and more widows made, and hundreds of thousands detained, exposed to the worst kinds of torture and humiliation (including 10,000 women) and without any kind of legal procedures...
According to the UN, eight million Iraqis are in need of emergency assistance. Seventy per cent of Iraqis are without access to safe supplies of drinking water. Electricity supply is beneath pre-invasion levels (in many areas electricity simply does not exist). Forty-three per cent of the population lives on less than half a dollar per day. Living standards in Iraq are getting worse despite contracts of over $20 billion being paid to companies to rebuild Iraq; they were swallowed by governmental corruption. Iraq is now third on the list of the most corrupted states in the world. Even the so-called Iraqi government admits that unemployment is between 60 and 70 per cent. Child malnutrition has increased from 19 per cent during the 1990s "economic sanctions period", before the invasion, to 28 per cent today.
But worst than all these hardships is the dark future that is awaiting Iraq. The old colonial divide and rule strategy is fully responsible for all sectarian divisions. The longer the occupying armies remain, the greater the chances of the country breaking up. The occupation created official security bodies out of sectarian militias, giving them the authority to kill or to support and help those who kill, kidnap and displace on sectarian bases. On the other hand, there are 180,000 mercenaries (apart from 170,000 official American troops) who are committing different kinds of killings, assassinations and explosions in civilian areas in order to instigate and augment sectarian conflict.
The American administration is working with its Iraqi agents in the so-called Iraqi government to sign a long-term treaty that will control Iraq politically, economically (including petroleum) and militarily for decades to come. This treaty is illegal as it is signed by two illegal parties: the occupying power, which by international humanitarian law has no right to sign any such agreement, and the so-called Iraqi government which was created under and by the occupation.
The only way to stop all these crimes, to hold American and other criminals responsible, and to start the real rebuilding of Iraq is to support the Iraqi people in its resistance to the occupation, to mobilise the world community against the occupation, and to end the world's silence and indifference to the first genocide of the 21st century.
Eman Khammas, Iraqi journalist, activist and now refugee
Permanent planetary emergency
After 9/11 the US invaded Afghanistan. But at the moment they could close in on Bin Laden, they withdrew. Why? Instead, they started an illegal invasion of Iraq, which was a catastrophe foretold. Why?
The neo-con ideology still provides a key to the answer. The book Present Dangers spelled it out. After the Cold War, America needed a new, big enemy, for having no enemy is bad for both politics and the military industrial complex. As soon as it was established in 1996, the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) -- with Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz as co-signatories -- asked the president in several letters for a war against Iraq.
In 2000, the PNAC published its report Rebuilding America's Defences, in which it asked for a major increase in military spending to "fight and decisively win multiple simultaneous major theatre wars". They also said that the unresolved conflict with Saddam Hussein provided an alibi for a permanent military presence in the Gulf. They were well aware that the revolution in military affairs they wished for was unlikely without, "some catalysing catastrophic event, like a new Pearl Harbour" (it is still on their website). So 9/11 was a godsend. The Bush government took up this new neo-con vision and declared the "war on terror".
With the strategy of allowing Osama and the Taliban in Afghanistan regain ground, and spreading Al-Qaeda to Iraq and angering the entire region and radicalising factions of Islam everywhere, they got what they needed: the ideal, big, if not monstrous, post-Cold War enemy. On the way they fulfilled the hidden agenda of Israel to get rid of Iraq, and by privatising warfare they gave a huge push to the development of a new military and paramilitary industry (what Naomi Klein has called the "disaster capitalism complex"). They destroyed the Iraqi state, seized its assets and its petroleum, got permanent bases and built the biggest embassy ever.
So as far as I can see, the neo-con agenda was realised, almost all according to plan. That it cost more than 1.2 million Iraqi lives and 4.7 million refugees and an entire population maimed, under-fed or traumatised (which makes it the biggest manmade disaster on the planet at this moment): too bad. Of course, there are conflicting opinions and interests; public opinion has turned against the war and the situation on the ground is called "messy", but as long as permanent war is assured, all is well.
All is well for the thinktanks that concocted the project for a new century of American dominance, or "pre-eminence" as they call it, by unleashing and then fighting "the present dangers": the ubiquitous terrorist as both enemy within and enemy without; the best enemy there is, for it gives you both the right to declare war and a state of emergency (from the Patriot Act to Guantanamo and beyond, up to antiterrorism laws in Europe). For that is what this war on terror is and remains: a consciously created planetary state of emergency. The war in Iraq is part of that plan for permanent war and permanent emergency.
Lieven De Cauter, philosopher, initiator of the B Russell s Tribunal, Belgium
On estimates
More than four million refugees.
At a rough estimation.
Four million, rough.
How rough, would you say?
Hilde Keteleer, poet, translator, critic
Let us support the people of Iraq
The fifth anniversary of the occupation of Iraq is also an anniversary of resistance by a National Liberation Movement of indigenous Iraqis against a foreign and oppressive occupation and its collaborators.
Brave Iraqis who are fighting with all necessary means to dislodge the United States, its allies and its collaborators from their occupation of Iraq are members of a National Liberation Movement. They may be referred to in English, although they have adopted no formal name, as the "Iraqi Liberation Movement", or ILM.
The ILM consists of all Iraqis who are struggling by peaceful or violent means to remove the occupying powers from the territory of the sovereign state of Iraq. The ILM is entitled to use all necessary means to end the occupation. It is so entitled because it represents the legitimate authority and will of the people of Iraq.
The recognition of national liberation movements is not new. National liberation movements are recognised as the consequence of the right of self-determination. This right is guaranteed in the very first common articles of the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; two of the most widely ratified human rights instruments in the world.
The UN Charter also refers to the right to self-determination in its first article. Article 73 of the charter then defines self- determination as "self-government" taking "due account of the political aspirations of the peoples" and assisting "them in the progressive development of their free political institutions, according to the particular circumstances of each territory and its peoples and their varying stages of development." Although this was intended to apply primarily to peoples under colonialism, it must be read in conjunction with Article 2, Paragraph 4 of the charter, which protects people from the illegal use of force.
The expression of self-determination in the context of colonialism was also expressed in UN General Assembly Resolution 1514 -- the Declaration on Granting Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples -- as well as Resolution 1541(XV) adopted a few days later. These resolutions recognised the right of self-determination as a right of peoples who are subject to colonial rule to decide on their own form of government. A slightly more general recognition can be found in the Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Cooperation among States in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations. As this latter document indicates, it is also part of customary international law, something confirmed by the UN Resolution 2625 adopted by consensus on 24 October 1970.
A National Liberation Movement is, renowned international jurist Ian Brownlie tells us, entitled to "conclude binding international agreements"; to the "rights and obligations set by the generally recognised principles of international humanitarian law"; and "to participate in the proceedings of the United Nations as observers". It is also entitled to the respect and support of every state and individual in the international community.
By providing whatever support is within one's abilities, each one of us contribute to liberating the Iraqi people. We may suffer consequences for our support of the brave Iraqis fighting against the most deadly killing machine American lives and money can buy, but whatever domestic laws say, such supporters -- governments or individuals -- are acting in accordance with international law. Something that the occupiers of Iraq have failed to do and our suffering is much less than that of Iraqis who gallantly face an army too cowardly to respect basic international law.
Let us remember with courage this fifth anniversary of this struggle to end the occupation of Iraq as the anniversary of the "first Iraqi Intifada" against the injustice brought upon Iraqis by foreign and oppressive occupiers and their collaborators. Let us support the people of Iraq.
Curtis F J Doebbler, international human rights lawyer
The US is weak
The United States is the weakest entity on earth. It proves it in its violence. It is a system that produces cadavers and voluntary and involuntary executioners: 3.2 million Iraqis dead since 1990 and 300 million Americans rendered complicit -- directly or by way to the so-called development surrounding them -- with the international crime of genocide. It is a system that simply couldn't function were truth suddenly substituted for lies.
How long will its façade continue when none among us is certain of escaping its prisons? Will it take a further $1 trillion to realise that Baghdad will never be subjugated? How long will the American people remain ignorant of the fact that in Iraq the United States faces the force of a social unity that has been a geopolitical reality for 5,000 years?
To future historians, the United States will command none of the respect it likes to think it has. Co-existence practically does not exist in US dictionaries. And its war on terror is just a name for killing or repressing everyone who at a gut level rejects servitude. It even creates phantoms to keep the whole masquerade going. And in their name it kills it own people as well as others.
In Iraq there is one reality: a defeated occupation and its collaborators, and the Iraqi people. We must support the Iraqi people in its resistance to occupation, for to do anything else leaves us siding with genocide. The latter we should prosecute.
Ian Douglas, International Initiative to Prosecute US Genocide in Iraq
Just get out!
In January 2003, just weeks before our illegal invasion, Nelson Mandela made the following statement: "... All Bush wants is Iraqi oil. Why [is the US] not seeking to confiscate weapons of mass destruction from [its] ally Israel? ... What I am condemning is that one power, with a president who has no foresight, who cannot think properly, is now wanting to plunge the world into a holocaust."
Well, as the banner on the aircraft carrier read, Mission Accomplished ... for the holocaust of ethnic cleansing in Palestine has extended to Iraq, COMPLIMENTS of our illegal and brutal occupation.
Were there weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? NO!
Were there ties between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda? NO!
Did the Iraqi people ever pose a threat to us? NO!
Have Sunnis and Shias been killing each other for thousands of years? NO!
How do we know our "leaders" are lying to us? Their lips are moving. In Iraq, as in Latin America in the 1980s, the bloodshed began when American CIA-operations were set in motion.
In reality, while there are over 2.2 million Iraqi refugees living mainly in Syria and Jordan, there is NO mass bloodshed and torture in these neighbouring countries. The genocide just happens to be occurring inside Iraq, where the American CIA, the Israeli Mossad, and the most powerful military in the world are running operations. It's simple: invasion and occupation are illegal, and there must be one consistent standard for justice and the law.
No timetables -- just IMMEDIATE WITHDRAWAL.
No conditions -- just IMMEDIATE WITHDRAWAL.
No more stoplossing soldiers -- just IMMEDIATE WITHDRAWAL.
Iraq needs only one thing from America -- just IMMEDIATE WITHDRAWAL.
Worldwide, we the peacemakers are the majority. Whatever obstacles we encounter in the struggle, they are nothing compared to what the Iraqi people are facing everyday. We are here. We have to push forward. And we cannot stop until our government's crimes do.
Dahlia Wasfi, Global Exchange -- Iraq/USA
Nine hundred and thirty five lies
Nine hundred and thirty five lies. Two groups that keep track of the media counted them. The Bush gang lied 935 times between 11 September 2001 and 19 March 2003, to justify the invasion of Iraq. Bush lied 259 times. The biggest lie was that Iraq had "weapons of mass destruction". A close second was that Saddam Hussein worked with Al-Qaeda. Why is the number of lies important? There were 935 opportunities to question the liars. The 935 lies are proof that the entire US ruling class is responsible for the conspiracy to wage war on Iraq.
The millions who marched against the war knew these were lies. You did not have to be Einstein. Nor Lenin. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz led the war conspiracy. But the entire ruling class and its institutions colluded. The Pentagon went along willingly. The State Department presented the false statements to the United Nations. Congress voted the funds.
No major corporate media questioned or challenged these lies. The influential New York Times and the Washington Post supported the war drive. Nor did the media allow war opponents to expose the lies.
In January and February 2003, mass mobilisations tried to stop the war. No major ruling class politicians or business figures participated in these protests. Not Kennedy, not Brzezinski, not Soros. The vast majority of the super-rich ruling class wanted the profits and plunder from a quick US victory in Iraq. The military-industrial complex bid for contracts. The strategists wanted US control of the world's energy sources. If they saw any dangers, they kept quiet.
But they made a big mistake. They were blinded by greed. Five years later, there is no "quick victory". There is much suffering by Iraqis, yes. But the occupation is a debacle for US imperialism. They made the same mistake Hitler made invading the Soviet Union in 1940, and that Washington made sending its army to Vietnam in 1967. The US rulers underestimated the Iraqis' willingness to sacrifice and fight rather than submit.
Now the liars are exposed. We must thank the heroic Iraqi resistance for exposing them. And we must dedicate ourselves to fight. Fight to end the occupation of Iraq. Fight to depose the entire ruling class that made this war.
John Catalinotto, International Action Centre
These and other statements were gathered by the B Russell s Tribunal www.brusselstribunal.org in cooperation with the Passa Porta House of Literature, Belgium.
C a p t i o n : In February 2003, more than a million protesters gathered both in Rome and London, two of the thousands of mass demonstrations worldwide against the impending war
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