Photo: An Iraqi woman argues with an American soldier in front of their base in the Jamia neighborhood in Baghdad, Iraq, Tuesday, April 3, 2007. Some 300 people marched to the base demanding the release of their relatives. (AP Photo/Asaad Mouhsin)
REPORTS – LIFE IN IRAQ
Growing Hopes
When I come to work, I usually pass through a very famous neighborhood in Baghdad. Its called Bab Al Shatji. Bab Al Sharji is very famous area in the center of Baghdad because of three main landmarks; the most important landmark is Al Hurriya statue (Liberty statue), the few very old cinemas which were very crowded during the 60es and the 70es and the last landmark is Al Umma park (the nation park). During the last centuries and to be more accurate, during the 60es and 70es Al Umma park was a very nice place where families used to go and have pictures. While I was surfing the net, I read few article about memories of old people who used to spend a lot of time in that small famous park. By the way, Al Umma park is only few hundred squared meters park. Since the start of the Iraqi Iranian war, the park was completely ignored by the former regime. The neglecting continued until few months ago when I saw some lorries and some bulldozers work in the park but the work stopped. In February, Baghdad municipality re started the work and it was really good work lasted until the first days of March when spring started in Iraq. Now Al Umma park is alive again. Hundreds of flowers seedlings with different lovely colors were planted round the lawn. When I pass through the park everyday, I wish I can spend an hour or even less moving among the flowers but my biggest wish is to see families return back to the park which I pray to be so soon.
Relocation of Arabs From Kirkuk Could Trigger Violence
The Iraqi government should delay the relocation of Arabs from the northern city of Kirkuk as the move could prompt inter-ethnic tension and violence, analysts say. On 29 March, the Iraqi cabinet endorsed a decision adopted by a governmental committee to relocate and compensate thousands of Arabs who had moved to Kirkuk, about 250km north of Baghdad, as part of former president Saddam Hussein’s ‘Arabisation’ policy, dating back to the 1980s. "Any [such] measure should be postponed during this difficult time that the country and Kirkuk are going through," Hafidh al-Jawari, a Kirkuk-based political analyst, said. Relocating thousands of Arab families who have lived in the area since the 1980s and “turning the city into a Kurdish one overnight will only increase violence between the Kurds on one side and Arabs and Turkomen on the other", al-Jawari added. There are reportedly about 8,000 Arab families who have indicated their willingness to leave Kirkuk in exchange for a compensation package. But it is those Arabs who are not willing to leave that could end up in violent clashes with Kurds. “There are some ‘Wafidin’ [Arab settlers who came under the ‘Arabisation’ policy] who refuse to leave under any condition. If they are forced to leave, there would most likely be violence,” Joost Hiltermann, Middle East project director for International Crisis Group (ICG).
AUDIO: Sustaining the Surge on NPR – Or, Getting the US To Do The Dirty Work
AUDIO: Checkpoints Make Haifa Street Safer on NPR – Or, Checkpoints Everywhere!
Smuggling Business Thrives As Iraqis Flee Violence, Death
Maher Abdul Razak, like millions of his countrymen, had given up. Fear had grown pervasive in his once-affluent Zaiyuna neighborhood of Baghdad. The laundry man down the street had been killed, and attacks on the market were common. Business was poor. So Razak, a Shiite Muslim, sold his 10-year-old BMW for $10,000 and his appliance store for $16,000. Unable to get a visa to go to Germany, he turned to smugglers to get him across the border to Turkey and on to Greece, on a path he hoped would lead him and his family to a new life in Sweden. Although few countries are willing to recognize them as political refugees, more than 2 million Iraqis have fled death threats, random violence, sectarian cleansing and poverty since the war began; 1.8 million more are displaced inside the country. The refugees' reasons may vary, but the root is the same: "You start to fear everything," Razak said. Most of those who've fled have settled in Syria or Jordan, but at least 40 Iraqis a day sneak across the border into Turkey, smugglers say. Kurds used to take the same route to escape the murderous regime of Saddam Hussein. Now the smuggling business is thriving again, Kurdish smugglers say, as Arab Iraqis flee the violence of post-Saddam Iraq. "In 2002 and 2003, business took a sharp dip and hardly any people came to me for services," said Dler, the pseudonym of a smuggler whose money-exchange business in the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah provides cover for his activities. "In 2004, the trend picked up again and business flourished above all expectations. These past months have been the best, and numbers are rising still. There are many who have left their names with me to smuggle them ASAP through Turkey."
REPORTS – IRAQI MILITIAS, POLITICIANS, POWER BROKERS
Cracks In Sadr's Army
Seven weeks into the U.S.-led security crackdown in Baghdad, leaders of the Al Mahdi militia of Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr acknowledge that their fighters are chafing under orders to freeze operations, and worry they could lose control of the sprawling organization. Some members have defected to armed groups that have no intention of calling a cease-fire. Commanders have gone underground, leaving a leadership void as U.S. forces arrest members in raids. Some commanders have fled to Iran and others to southern Iraq. Rumors abound about the location of Sadr. Senior leaders of Sadr's movement also worry openly that Iran has started to recruit Al Mahdi fighters to possibly confront U.S. forces in Iraq. Sadr's movement is part of the U.S.-backed government, but now American and Iraqi officials face the danger that the Al Mahdi militia may splinter into dozens of armed groups no longer under a national command. "If he is off the political scene, then we have a problem because you have to deal with several groups with unknown affiliations and agendas," said Laith Kubba, a senior director at the Washington-based National Endowment for Democracy and a onetime spokesman for former Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari. "There is nothing binding them but Muqtada Sadr."
REPORTS – US/UK/OTHERS IN IRAQ
The Botched US Raid That Led to the Hostage Crisis
A failed American attempt to abduct two senior Iranian security officers on an official visit to northern Iraq was the starting pistol for a crisis that 10 weeks later led to Iranians seizing 15 British sailors and Marines. Early on the morning of 11 January, helicopter-born US forces launched a surprise raid on a long-established Iranian liaison office in the city of Arbil in Iraqi Kurdistan. They captured five relatively junior Iranian officials whom the US accuses of being intelligence agents and still holds. In reality the US attack had a far more ambitious objective, The Independent has learned. The aim of the raid, launched without informing the Kurdish authorities, was to seize two men at the very heart of the Iranian security establishment. Better understanding of the seriousness of the US action in Arbil - and the angry Iranian response to it - should have led Downing Street and the Ministry of Defence to realise that Iran was likely to retaliate against American or British forces such as highly vulnerable Navy search parties in the Gulf. The two senior Iranian officers the US sought to capture were Mohammed Jafari, the powerful deputy head of the Iranian National Security Council, and General Minojahar Frouzanda, the chief of intelligence of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, according to Kurdish officials.
Iran to Free Captured British Sailors, Marines
Iran today announced the release of 15 British sailors and marines it seized two weeks ago in disputed waters of the Persian Gulf, ending a diplomatic crisis with a bit of political theater that included a chatty, smiling round of goodbyes between Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Britons. In a surprise turn of events, Ahmadinejad in a Tehran press conference first awarded bravery medals to an Iranian commander involved in seizing the British seamen on March 23, then announced that the captives were being freed as a "gift" honoring both the Easter holiday and Muslim celebrations commemorating the birth of the Prophet Muhammad. "I announce their freedom," the Iranian president said, according to a translation of his press conference aired on CNN. "They will be free after our meeting. They will go to the airport and be with their families."
COMMENTARY
Iraqi Oil Belongs To The Iraqi People
A new Petroleum Law will be presented to the Iraqi Parliament that, if enacted, will put effective control of Iraq's vast oil resources in the hands of foreign companies. Nationalized since 1975, Iraq's oil was, before the years of sanctions and the invasion, the foundation for a relatively high standard of living, producing more PhD's per capita than the U.S. and a health care system prized as the best in the region. President Bush says the war is not about oil but his actions belie that claim. In the months before the March 2003 invasion, members of the U.S. State Department “Oil and Energy Working Group” met to plan how to open Iraq to international oil companies. As reported by investigative journalist Greg Palast, the oil law now proposed by the Iraqi Council of Ministers is a virtual photocopy of a plan first drafted by U.S. oil industry executives and consultants in Houston long before Iraq was “liberated.” The proposed Petroleum Law creates a Federal Oil and Gas Council on which would sit representatives of Exxon- Mobil, Shell, BP, etc., whose tasks include approving their own contracts. Instead of Iraqi central government decision-making on oil, the proposal authorizes regional authorities to individually sign contracts with foreign companies, promoting contract bidding wars between regions that could lead to breaking Iraq into three states. The practice in Iraq - as in other countries with giant reserves - has been that control of oil production rests with public sector oil companies. The role of foreign companies is limited to “service contracts.” A company is contracted to provide a stated service for a limited period - build a refinery, lay a pipeline, drill a field. Decisions on development, distribution, and flow of profits remain with the government. Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Iran run their industries this way. However, the proposed Petroleum Law provides for “production sharing agreements,” or long-term contracts whereby foreign companies control production, development and sale of the oil for up to 30 years, and reap as much as 70% of the profits. Given the severe weakness of Iraqi institutions, with the country devastated, under military occupation and mired in civil strife, Iraq is unlikely to receive a fair deal. With huge reserves and low production costs, foreign oil companies in Iraq stand to make enormous profits at the expense of the welfare of Iraq’s people and Iraqi sovereignty.
HISTORY
West Has Bloodied Hands
Who was the first high government official to authorize use of mustard gas against rebellious Kurdish tribesmen in Iraq? If your answer was Saddam Hussein's cousin, the notorious "Chemical Ali" -- aka Ali Hassan al-Majid -- you're wrong. The correct answer: Sainted Winston Churchill. As colonial secretary and secretary for war and air, he authorized the RAF in the 1920s to routinely use mustard gas against rebellious Kurdish tribesmen in Iraq and against Pashtun tribes on British India's northwest frontier.
Iraq's U.S.-installed regime has just announced al-Majid, one of Saddam's most brutal henchmen, will stand trial next week for war crimes. Al-Majid is accused of ordering the 1988 gassing of Kurds at Halabja that killed over 5,000 civilians. He led the bloody suppression of Iraq's Shias, killing tens of thousands. These were the same Shias whom former U.S. president George Bush called to rebel against Saddam's regime, then sat back and did nothing while they were crushed. The Halabja atrocity remains murky. The CIA's former Iraq desk chief claims Kurds who died at Halabja were killed by cyanide gas, not nerve gas, as is generally believed. At the time, Iraq and Iran were locked in the ferocious last battles of their eight-year war. Halabja was caught between the two armies that were exchanging salvos of regular and chemical munitions. Only Iran had cyanide gas. If the CIA official is correct, the Kurds were accidentally killed by Iran, not Iraq.
How to Help
Very few organizations are working on getting aid to Iraqi refugees, and of those that are, many are too small or too beleaguered to accept individual donations; the Iraqi Red Crescent, for example, has suffered bombings and mass kidnappings, yet its volunteers continue to deliver aid to displaced families inside Iraq. One of the larger relief organizations working with the refugees is the Catholic group Caritas, whose caseworkers I shadowed while in Amman. Bucking the image of the Land Rover-driving aid worker, they made their rounds in an aging gray Honda, its roof eaten through by rust. They visited Iraqi doctors, engineers, and executives desperate for food, heat, or blankets to fend off the desert winter; one family told the crew they had just sold their stove to buy food. Caritas helps a few thousand families a year, but "the demand far outstrips the money available to us," says Magy Mahrous, who oversees the project. You can make a contribution at:
International Catholic Migration Commission
Citibank USA
153 East 53rd Street, 16th floor
New York, NY 10043
Account # 10100491, ABA # 21000089, Swift Code CITIUS33
To ensure that the money reaches the Iraqi program, write "Iraq-icmc" on your check.
Another way to help: War Child International
Photo: An Iraqi woman argues with an American soldier in front of their base in the Jamia neighborhood in 
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