These are the archives for the week ending 12th October 2007
One in six forced to flee
Most of Iraq's provinces have closed their doors to people fleeing conflict elsewhere in the country, cutting off a vital escape route for people threatened by sectarian violence.
According to aid officials, 10 out of 18 of Iraq's governorates are denying entry to civilians trying to escape the fighting or denying them aid once they have arrived, or both.
With the imposition of visa restrictions by Jordan and Syria, hitherto the main destination for Iraqi refugees, those seeking safety from Iraq's ceaseless bloodshed have virtually run out of options.
"There are more and more makeshift camps in abysmal conditions, with terrible sanitation and water supply, very little or no healthcare, and no schools." Ron Redmond, a spokesman for the UN high commissioner for refugees, said .
About 4.5 million Iraqis (one in six of the population) have been forced to flee their homes since the 2003 invasion - the worst refugee crisis in the Middle East for more than half a century.
Nearly half have gone to neighbouring countries, primarily Syria and Jordan, and the other half have sought refugee elsewhere in Iraq. Very few have made it to the US or Europe, which have drastically cut the admission of Iraqi refugees since the start of the war.
Out of 740 rulings on the fate of Iraqi refugees last year Britain granted asylum to 30, according to Home Office figures. The US allowed entry to 535 Iraqis last year, less than a fifth of the number it accepted in 2000, three years before the war began.
Guardian 11/10/07
US detains nearly 25,000 in Iraq
The US military is holding nearly 25,000 people in its prisons in Iraq, 860 of whom are under the age of 16, the general in charge of their detention said on Wednesday.
Eighty-three percent of inmates are Sunnis and 16 percentare Shiite, General Douglas Stone told a press conference in Baghdad.
Egyptians, Iranians, Saudis and Syrians number among 280 foreign nationals imprisoned by the US military in Iraq, he said.
There are two prisons run by the Americans on Iraqi soil: one at their Camp Cropper base outside Baghdad, the other at Camp Bucca near the southern port of Umm Qasr.
These prisons receive an average of 60 new inmates each day, according to Stone, while the average length of time for incarceration of a detainee is 300 days.
Since the beginning of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in mid-September, the US military has freed around 50 to 60 prisoners every day.
AFP 10/10/07
women killed in security shooting
2 The two women killed Tuesday by a barrage of gunfire from private security guards in central Baghdad were buried here today, and relatives insisted that the guards be brought to justice.
"The killers must be punished," said Albert Mamook, the brother of one of the victims, Marany Awanees, 59. "We have a right for justice," he said.
Ms. Awanees was driving the white Oldsmobile that was riddled by automatic gunfire in the Karada neighbourhood of Baghdad Tuesday afternoon. Her front-seat passenger, Jeniva Jalal, 30, was also killed; a woman and a boy in the back seat survived.
The incident came just weeks after a shooting by another company strained relations between the United States and Iraq.
An Iraqi government spokesman today condemned the shooting as the latest sign of recklessness by security contractors in Iraq.
The guards involved in the Tuesday shooting were working for an Australian-run security company. But the people they were assigned to protect work under the same United States government agency whose security guards sprayed bullets across a crowded Baghdad square on Sept. 16, an episode that caused an uproar among Iraqi officials and is still being investigated by the United States.
New York Times 10/10/07
Pakistan fighting kills 250
Pakistani jets pounded militant hideouts in a troubled tribal region Tuesday, taking the death toll to 250 from three of the heaviest days of fighting in the region since 2001.
The clashes have forced thousands to flee from Mir Ali, a town in lawless North Waziristan district that President Pervez Musharraf has previously pinpointed as a den of Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network.
Residents said dozens of people including women and children were killed in the latest air strikes in the rugged region bordering Afghanistan, but security officials insisted the dead were all Islamist fighters.
The unrest puts extra pressure on military ruler Musharraf - a key ally in the US-led "war on terror" - as he waits for the Supreme Court to legitimise his victory in Saturday's presidential election.
AFP 9/10/10
US calls for restraint over Kurdish attacks
America warned Turkey to show restraint in the face of mounting public anger over attacks by Kurdish terrorists, hours after Ankara gave the country's military permission to conduct cross-border operations in Iraq.
Diplomats scrambled to force Turkey to abandon plans to strike PKK terrorists moving between bases inside Iraq. "I am not sure that unilateral incursions are the way to go, the way to resolve the issue," said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.
"We have counselled them both in public and private for many, many months (on) the idea that it is important to work cooperatively to resolve this issue,"
Fifteen Turkish soldiers were killed in clashes with the PKK this week. As the television gave saturation coverage to the young paratroops obituaries, the government finally succumbed to a military pressure to greenlight incursions.
A spokesman for the US National Security Council, Gordon Johndroe attempted to reassure Turkey that America was putting pressure on the Kurdish authorities in northern Iraq to clamp down on terrorist groups.
"The United States is committed to working with both Turkey and Iraq to combat the PKK," Mr Johndroe said. "We know the attacks by Kurdish outlier groups are not in the interest of either Turkey or Iraq,"
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, said the military could hunt down Kurdish terrorists south of its border.
As a Nato member Turkey would be challenging its senior alliance partner, the United States which guards Iraq's external borders. The US military doesn't maintain a combat force in the self-governing Kurdish regions of Iraq.
Telegraph 9/10/07
UK on 'glide path' out of Iraq
Gordon Brown plans to halve Britain's troop presence in Iraq by next April, placing UK armed forces on what a senior government official called a "progressive glide path" out of the country.
The prime minister told parliament the troop reduction would take place in several steps as British forces gradually limited their role to training Iraqi forces.
About 5,000 troops are in Iraq, down from 5,500 at the beginning of September. This will fall to 4,500 as security control in Basra province is handed to Iraqi forces, probably in two months' time.
In April, the government will make a further decision on what to do after that - but officials acknowledged it was possible British troops could be out of Iraq by the end of next year. "There is no guarantee they will be there beyond the end of 2008," a senior official said.
Mr Brown is meeting Robert Gates, US defence secretary, this week and is keen to handle the British drawdown in a manner that does not increase pressure on Washington. Officials said the pull-out had been agreed by US commanders in Iraq and was not expected to require US troops to move into the region.
A government official said withdrawal was "predicated on the assumption that it won't be necessary to move any other non-UK forces into southern Iraq".
Financial Times 8/10/07
Iraq Seeks Blackwater Ouster
Iraqi authorities want the U.S. government to sever all contracts in Iraq with Blackwater USA within six months and pay $8 million in compensation to each of the families of 17 people killed when the firm's guards sprayed a traffic circle with heavy machine gun fire last month.
The demands - part of an Iraqi government report examined by The Associated Press - also called on U.S. authorities to hand over the Blackwater security agents involved in the Sept. 16 shootings to face possible trial in Iraqi courts.
The tone of the Iraqi report appears to signal further strains between the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the White House over the deaths in Nisoor Square - which have prompted a series of U.S. and Iraqi probes and raised questions over the use of private security contractors to guard U.S. diplomats and other officials.
AP 8/10/07
Corruption fighter flees to US
Iraq's top corruption fighter, who's seeking U.S. asylum because of death threats against him, told a congressional panel Thursday that rising corruption cost Iraq $18 billion over the past three years, with enormous sums of oil revenues ending up in the hands of Sunni and Shiite militias.
Radhi Hamza al Radhi said Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki and his government prevented Radhi's U.S.-backed Commission on Public Integrity from taking action against top national officials, including current and former ministers.
Yahoo News, 4/10/07
Cholera underlines weakness of Maliki government
The World Health Organization has confirmed more than 3,300 cholera cases in Iraq and at least 14 deaths from the acute and rapid dehydration it causes.
The troubles, however, also point beyond the immediate struggle to control the deadly advance. They highlight the creeping fractures throughout the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the country's deepening sectarian gulf and a gangland-style lawlessness in which even medical supplies are fair game for bandits.
The health minister, Ali al-Shemari, fled the country after U.S. forces raided offices in February and arrested his deputy, accused of diverting millions of dollars to the biggest Shiite militia and of allowing death squads' use of ambulances and hospitals to carry out kidnappings and killings.
Hospitals also are divided along Iraq's sectarian split, with Shiites and Sunnis often too scared to venture into any facility controlled by the other. For health workers, this leaves worrying gaps with cholera cases now reaching half of Iraq's 18 provinces.
Finally, Cholera can be controlled by treating drinking water with chlorine. But authorities want to keep tight controls on chlorine supplies after extremists earlier this year placed chlorine tanks on suicide truck bombs, killing some two dozen people in several attacks and sending noxious clouds that left hundreds of panicked people gasping for breath.
Associated Press, 5/10/07
Six years of war in Afghanistan
Six years after a war was launched to overthrow the Taliban, British solders are still being killed in bloody skirmishing in a conflict in which no final victory is possible. Six years on, Britain is once again, as in Iraq, the most junior of partners, spending the lives of its soldiers with little real influence over the war.
The drip-drip of British losses underlines how little has been achieved in the past six years, and how quickly any gains can be lost.
The violence shows no sign of ending. Suicide bombings, gun battles, airstrikes and roadside bombs have killed 5,100 people in the first nine months of this year, a 55 per cent increase over the same period in 2006.
Most of southern Afghanistan was safer in the spring of 2002 than it is now and at no moment during the years that have elapsed is there any evidence from the speeches of successive British ministers that they have much idea what we are doing there and what we hope to achieve.
Victory in Afghanistan six years after the start of the war to overthrow the Taliban is not likely. Even massively expanding troop levels would just mean more targets, and more losses. Armies of occupation, or perceived occupation, always provoke a reaction.
Ultimately what happens in Afghanistan will be far more determined not by skirmishes in Helmand province, but by developments in Pakistan, the Taliban's great supporter, which are wholly beyond British control. And the agenda in both the Afghan and Iraqi wars is ultimately determined by US domestic political needs.
Successes in faraway wars have to be manufactured or exaggerated. Necessary compromises are ruled out, leaving Iraqis and Afghans alike with the dismal outlook of war without end.
Independent on Sunday 7/10/07
Iraq's Kurdistan defends oil deals
The government in Iraqi Kurdistan has reiterated its defence of oil and gas deals it has signed with foreign firms this year, with the semi-autonomous region's prime minister saying two more would be signed soon.
Kurdistan Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani accused Iraq's central government, which has said deals signed by Kurdistan after February 2007 are illegal, of being locked in a Saddam Hussein-era "time warp".
Oil Ministry officials in Baghdad were using Iraq's oil resources, the third-largest in the world, "to create obeisance and loyalty to the center", Barzani wrote in an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal at the weekend.
Iraq's cabinet agreed on a draft oil law, under which control and revenue from Iraq's oil reserves are to be shared among Baghdad and Iraq's provinces, but the law has since been stalled amid political infighting.
Frustrated by the delays, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) approved its own oil law in August and said last month it had signed a production sharing contract with a unit of U.S.-based Hunt Oil Co and with Impulse Energy Corp.
Reuters
US new Iraq embassy late, over-budget
A new US embassy compound being built in Baghdad risks running over budget and months behind schedule due to poor planning, shoddy work and squabbles, the Washington Post newspaper reported Sunday.
It cited unnamed US officials and a State Department document submitted to Congress suggesting the huge embassy could overshoot its 592-million-dollar initial budget by 144 million dollars.
Core work on the facility was supposed to have been finished last month but has dragged on and two key elements of the 21-building compound may not be finished until 2009, it said.
The newspaper cited a row between the US ambassador in Iraq, Ryan Crocker, and a Washington-based official overseeing the project as one of the causes of the delay. It also said poor workmanship by contractors slowed the project down due to health and safety concerns.
The new embassy is intended to provide full-time housing and facilities for staff at a single site safe from attacks in the war-torn city, setting up a long-term US diplomatic presence in Iraq, where insurgent violence is rife.
AFP 7/10/07
Two Shiite Leaders in Iraq Reach a Peace Agreement
Two powerful Shiite leaders, the clerics Moktada al-Sadr and Abdul Aziz Hakim, announced a peace agreement Saturday aimed at ending frequent gun battles between their followers.
The agreement was a positive sign for the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki because support from the political wings of both men's organizations is seen as necessary to avoid a vote of no confidence in Parliament.
Though both groups are in the government, violence between Mr. Sadr's militia, the Mahdi Army, and the armed wing of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, led by Mr. Hakim, has simmered in southern Iraq for four years. It was not clear how far the agreement would go toward ending the fighting.
In the agreement, the two men signed off on three broadly worded points, Liwa Smeism, a political aide to Mr. Sadr, said in a telephone interview. They called for a cease-fire, an end to negative propaganda in the news media and the formation of joint committees in the provinces to mediate disputes, Mr. Smeism said.
Violence between Shiite groups has continued to escalate in the southern city of Basra, where the Sadrists, the Supreme Council and other Shiite parties are vying for dominance after British troops withdrew from their base in the city center. "
New York Times 7/10/07
Petraeus Accuses Iran of Fueling Iraq Violence
Gen. David Petraeus laid further blame on Iran for violence in Iraq on Sunday, charging that Tehran's ambassador to Baghdad was once a member of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards force.
Petraeus added that Iran has been aiding Iraqi rebels with training and gifts of high-powered weaponry. "They are responsible for providing the weapons, the training, the funding and in some cases the direction for operations that have indeed killed U.S. soldiers," Petraeus said.
Without citing any specific intelligence, Petraeus labeled Hassan Kazemi-Qomi, Iran's envoy to Baghdad, as a former member of the Revolutionary Guards Quds force.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry dismissed the "baseless" accusations, according to the Islamic Republic News Agency. "They repeatedly link those arrested or killed in the bombardments with the Quds force. If they can, they announce names of those people or hand over the names to the Islamic Republic of Iran," Mohammad-Ali Hosseini told IRNA.
The Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps has been under intense scrutiny by U.S. officials. In August, President Bush signed an executive order branding them as a "specially designated global terrorist."
Iran returned the "favor" last week with a parliamentary order that gave the U.S. Army and the CIA the same distinction.
Fox News 7/10/07