News & Views 12/24/07

Photo: An Iraqi soldier breaks down a door during a joint operation with the U.S. Army in the Czech Village housing area near the Baiji oil refinery December 24, 2007. REUTERS/Bob Strong (IRAQ)

REPORTS – LIFE IN IRAQ

Iraqi Cardinal: Fear Is Still Pervading

Fear still pervades life in Iraq despite a recent reduction in violence, the spiritual leader of Iraq's Catholics said Monday, making a Christmas appeal for refugees who have fled the country to return nonetheless. The U.S. military has said there has been a 60 percent reduction in violence since June, and the incessant sound of car bombs and gunfire that used to fill the days in central Baghdad has clearly abated. During the past few days of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, Iraq appears to been living through some of the most peaceful moments since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. But security is still poor and many Iraqis fear to venture far from home. Armed gangs and militias roam city streets, car bombs and suicide bombers attack markets, police patrols and liquor stores, and the dead bodies of tortured kidnap victims turn up almost daily along river banks or dumped on the streets. "Let's hope that it's getting better, but I think that it's the same," Cardinal Emmanuel III Delly, leader of the ancient Chaldean Church and Iraq's first cardinal, said in an interview with The Associated Press on Christmas Eve.

Sombre Christmas in Iraq

Rita and Maria Farid, two Iraqi Christians living in the central Baghdad district of Karrada, did not want to celebrate Christmas this year and only bought a tree at the last minute. "Christmas is very difficult for us. It's a time for family and friends, and this year for the first time, our family is incomplete," Maria Farid said. In early May, Majid Farid, their brother, was killed in a car bomb blast as he walked to a currency exchange centre not far from the family home. "He was going to convert Iraqi dinars to dollars to go to Jordan and meet a lovely Iraqi woman he had hoped to marry," Maria recalled. "We knew something had happened to him immediately. I tried calling him on his mobile phone, but I couldn't get through and I just knew."

Gunmen abduct Shiite passengers in Iraq

Gunmen ambushed a bus near the restive Iraqi city of Baquba on Monday and kidnapped 14 Shiite passengers, a day after 13 members of a family were killed when a train rammed into their car. Armed men set up a fake checkpoint near the village of Albushaheen in Diyala province and stopped a bus carrying 14 Shiites, police officer Hazim Yassin told AFP from the provincial capital of Baquba. The gunmen kidnapped all the passengers, including some women and children, he said. [Maybe they were part of the Iraqi security forces – who knows? – dancewater]

Train Kills Couple, 11 Children

A train struck a minivan at an intersection south of Baghdad on Monday, killing a couple and 11 children, police and hospital officials said. The cargo train struck the van as it crossed an intersection in the town of Hillah,

Iraqi team irritated by national anthem mix-up

Asian Cup holders Iraq were confused and annoyed when they were made to listen to the wrong national anthem before their opening match of the King's Cup tournament in Thailand on Saturday. Lined up facing their national flag with their hands on their hearts, the Iraqi players looked baffled and embarrassed when a tune they had never heard of rang out around the Rajamangala stadium before their match with North Korea. The crowd were alerted to the bizarre mishap when suited Iraqi federation officials in the VIP enclosure sat down in protest midway through the song, waving their hands in the air and demanding to know what had happened.

Little peace or goodwill for Baghdad's dwindling band of Christians

In the little Church of the Virgin Mary in the heart of Baghdad, worshipper Yvonne Jadu joins a dwindling band of believers to celebrate a fearful Christmas in the shadow of suicide bombings and sectarian violence. For her it's a festival that has lost its magic and meaning in a city racked with bloodshed rather than brimming with peace and good will. Nothing about Christmas seems the same. Neither the carols sung by the choir welcoming her into the church, nor the personal welcome from priest, Cardinal Emmanuel Delly, sound to her ears like they used to do. "It's just not 'Christmas' any more. Before 2003, the church was full. People sang carols. People were happy," said a world-weary, resigned Jadu -- her head covered by a white scarf -- pointing to rows of empty pews in the church, part of one of the oldest Catholic communities in the world.

A Brit in Baghdad

My friends in the UK say I must be mad to stay here, and my family would love us to return. But it's not that simple. We can't just pack up our stuff and go. My kids have spent most of their lives here - my eldest was only two when we left Britain. So we stay. We hope. We pray. The first three or four years were difficult. We moved into a house with 10 other adults from my husband's family. I didn't have the freedom to do what I wanted and had only my room as my space. I had to learn a new language, culture and a new way of life. You can be surrounded by people but still feel lonely and homesick. It was also the beginning of the sanctions. The country was starved of commercial goods - for example, disposable nappies were not available, TVs and electrical goods were not permitted. And I'm a coffee drinker, and I couldn't get hold of the stuff for months at a time.

…..We hear explosions most of the time. Some close, some far off. Back in January, I was less than 100 metres from a car bomb. I was walking with my husband and my 17-year-old daughter through an area packed with people shopping. Suddenly there was an explosion. A second of silence. Then a barrage of glass, metal, pieces of wood and shrapnel flew over our heads. A metallic piece from a neon sign landed a few inches from us. My husband pulled me and my daughter onto the floor. We hid our heads under a parked car. Then people from the small side roads dragged us into their front doors, and gave us water and towels to clean our faces from the dust and dirt. People were rushing around looking for lost relatives and coming into the alleyways covered in blood from flying glass. An hour later, they captured another car bomber whose vehicle had broken down. His car had been packed with explosives, calor gas, nails and petrol canisters. That event shows the two sides of life here. The violence, but also the support - from the extended family and the wider community. People who don't know you, have never seen you before, will rush to help you.

AlQaeda inside the American jails in Iraq

in this video the man was saying" they have like an army general with body guards, and he gives orders like a general and his orders are obeyed, and the Americans are in the outer towers and they watch it but once you talk about it... it's the end.... they will grab you and chop you to meat pieces...even if you were transferred to another camp... they will send your number there, they have groups every where in all the camps, they have a network of communication..they send it between a camp and another ..... they use a stone with a paper rapped on it in which they say that this person whose number is this must be killed, they throw it from a camp to another until it reached the camp in which you are....for example I have seen a message being received about someone I knew from AlBuageel (a tribe) who was innocent and was transferred to the 10th camp (for terrorism) and I was at the 9th camp, at the night of the same day they killed him , they inserted three skewers in his head and he was killed.....only because he was an officer in the army..." then the show presenter asked him about who do they mark as unbeliever, then the witness was talking about a debate that happened between him and some young man in Alqaeda when that man said that some shaikh (Abd ilmalik) is a disbeliever....
then he talked about his cousin who had a personal dispute with one of AQ members and for that they broke his arms, legs and clavicle.

I was so surprised to hear these things, I didn't think that Alqaeda had such influence inside the jails, they own the jail in fact.... and the surprising thing is that there are about 70-100 thousand prisoners who weren't charged with anything as the show presenter said when she was talking with an American general, but he said that this number is isn't true the real number is about 30 thousand...... It really doesn't matter it's still a huge number.... imagine such number of innocent people inside the jail where AQ have the power..... how many will they recruit?

Call to free Iraq's Tariq Aziz

The spiritual leader of Iraq's Chaldean Christian community has called on US forces to release Saddam Hussein's ex-deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz. Cardinal Emmanuel Delly made the request in his Christmas message. Mr Aziz, who is himself a Christian, gave himself up to US forces after the invasion of Iraq in 2003 but no charges have been brought against him. He was seen in court last year in his pyjamas, testifying for the defence in the trial of Saddam Hussein. "In terms of Tariq Aziz," Cardinal Delly said, "we have to demand the release of all those who were captured and which have no evidence against them." The Chaldean patriarch of Baghdad, who criticised the US-led invasion in 2003, said his requests to visit Mr Aziz in prison had been turned down.

Artist Mans Front Line in Battle for Iraqi Culture

For Sabti, the once beautiful city with more than 1,000 years of cultural history has been reduced to a barren wasteland of barbed wire and cruelty. He walks across the Hewar gallery -- which he founded in 1992 as a meeting-place for Iraqi artists -- with a limp, a remnant of the polio which saved him from "military service and wars which decimated" his generation. The 53-year-old father-of-three explained in stuttering English how he has become an "engaged artist" since the US-led invasion of March 2003. During the widespread looting in the wake of the invasion, "more than 5,000 books from the Academy of Fine Arts were stolen and destroyed," the former professor of the institute explained. "I found many badly damaged books, partly burnt with their pages torn out, scattered throughout the neighbourhood. I collected them up with a heavy heart and asked myself what I should do with them," he said. "Then I got the idea to do this series of art works, using the bindings of the ruined books. They clearly show what has become of my city under American occupation; a place where culture has disappeared; a place where weapons and religion are everything."

Drama continues

He tried to explain to me the changes that have taken place in Baghdad, he said that the situation is about 5% better than how it was when I was Iraq, he says "do you remember the men we used to see on motorbics who used to kidnap people and kill people? Alqa`ida men?" I said "sure", he goes "well, yeah, now they call themselevs the Awakening men of Adhamiya, they have removed Alqa`ida masks from their stinky faces and now wearing the masks of the awakening wave, he said you would be amazed if you come to the area and see the checkpoints ran by even children, you may see a 14 year old kid rasing a gun in your face and asking you to obey him in order to check you for guns and explosives, he said the only reason that the situation now is a little better in the area is because the American troops have paid those guys money in order to work with them", he continues saying "the whole issue is about money, give money you get alliances".

REPORTS – IRAQI MILITIAS, POLITICIANS, POWER BROKERS

Iraq Kurds warn Turkey over raids

The president of the Kurdish region in northern Iraq has warned Turkey to halt its strikes against rebel Kurdish positions in the border area. Massoud Barzani said he "vehemently condemned" the bombardments, which he said had killed innocent people. Turkish jets have carried out three strikes on Kurdish targets and one ground foray over the past eight days. Turkey blames rebels from the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) for launching attacks on Turkey from bases in Iraq. Ankara approved cross-border raids on PKK bases in October, saying the Iraqi government and its US backers were not doing enough to halt attacks.

In a force for Iraqi calm, seeds of conflict

The thin teenage boy rushed up to the patrol of American soldiers walking through Dora, a shrapnel-scarred neighborhood of the capital, and lifted his shirt to show them a mass of red welts across his back. He said he was a member of a local Sunni “Awakening” group, paid by the American military to patrol the district, but he said it was another Awakening group that beat him. “They took me while I was working,” he said, “and broke my badge and said, ‘You are from Al Qaeda.’” The soldiers were unsure of what to do. The Awakening groups in just their area of southern Baghdad could not seem to get along: they fought over turf and, it turned out in this case, one group had warned the other that its members should not pay rent to Shiite “dogs.” The Awakening movement, a predominantly Sunni Arab force recruited to fight Sunni Islamic extremists like Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, has become a great success story after its spread from Sunni tribes in Anbar Province to become an ad-hoc armed force of 65,000 to 80,000 across the country in less than a year. A linchpin of the American strategy to pacify Iraq, the movement has been widely credited with turning around the violence-scarred areas where the Sunni insurgency has been based. But the beating that day was a stark example of how rivalries and sectarianism are still undermining the Americans’ plans. And in particular, the Awakening’s rapid expansion — the Americans say the force could reach 100,000 — is creating new concerns.

Pseudo Mahdi Army members behind Karbala unrest – MP

An Iraqi legislator on Sunday held some men who falsely claimed they belonged to Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia responsible for the city’s violent unrest during the al-Ziyara al-Shaabaniya, or the mid-Shabban visit. "Men who claimed they belonged to the Mahdi army were responsible for acts of riot during the holy visit to Karbala after targeting the holy shrines of Imam al-Hussein and his brother al-Abbas," Mathal al-Alusi, the chairman of the Karbala incidents fact-finding committee, told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI). Alusi called for "bringing those who carried out these acts before court for the sake of maintaining the rule of law." "Muqtada al-Sadr had nothing to do with the incidents in Karbala," emphasized Alusi, adding "Sadr and his office in Karbala had called for calm." The MP lauded Sadr’s decision to freeze the activities of his Mahdi Army militia for six months. On August 28, 2007, fierce clashes broke out between security forces and armed groups in the Shiite city of Karbala, during which hundreds of residents and security personnel were killed or wounded. The incidents coincided with al-Ziyara al-Shaabaniya, a Shiite pilgrimage to commemorate the birth anniversary of the Messiah-like Imam al-Mahdi, the 12^th holiest figure for Shiite Muslims.

Kurds and Arabs fail to bridge differences

The ruling coalition of Arab Shiites and Kurds, who are mostly Sunni Muslims, has much less in common than previously thought. Both need each other to keep their small majority intact and thereby preserve the strings of power, no matter how shaky, in their hands. The Kurds are represented by ostensibly secular political factions battling a surge in Islamic militancy in their own backyard in northern Iraq. Fighting militant Sunni elements like those linked to al-Qaeda is the platform that brings them together and appeals to their protectors, the U.S. occupiers. Otherwise, there is little common ground for them to stand and the divisive issues setting them apart remain unsolved despite their alliance now in its fourth year.

Iraq resistance still in operation

Over the years, Jami has established itself as a resistance group which publicly condemns attacks on Iraqi security forces and random targeting of Shia civilians. Its media centre is run by fighters who each hold a masters degree in media, Al Jazeera has been told. "We want them to understand the situation here and see that we are only fighting occupation forces." For Jami, the most convincing recruitment tools are pictures of abuse by US forces. The group's field of operations covers the provinces of Anbar, Salahedin, Diyala and around Mosul in the north. Of late, the US and Iraqi governments have taken advantage of a wave of popular anger that has chased al-Qaeda from its strongholds, to claim a small victory against the "insurgency". But groups such as Jami will have to be dealt with by other means.

Iraqi fighters display new weapons

Foreign forces in Iraq are hoping that a much heralded drop in violence in Iraq will continue into the new year. However, in exclusive images obtained by Al Jazeera, fighters from the Islamic Front for Resistance in Iraq (Jami) say they are biding their time and training hard with an array of new weapons in order to drive foreign forces out as soon as possible.

REPORTS – US/UK/OTHERS IN IRAQ

Bush backs Turkey's raids on PKK

Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan has received US President Bush's support for Ankara's military strikes on Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq. In a telephone conversation on Monday, US President George W. Bush spoke to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the two men hailed the cooperation against the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), reported the Anatolia news agency. Calling the PKK "the common enemy", the two leaders emphasized their commitment to continue with intelligence sharing.

New reports turn up heat on security contractors in Iraq

The issue of private security contractors in Iraq was first brought into the public spotlight on Sept. 16, when employees of the Blackwater security firm opened fire on a Baghdad traffic circle, killing 17 civilians. A US military investigation found no evidence that the Blackwater employees were provoked, and US federal prosecutors have begun a grand jury investigation of the shooting. But the Washington Post report says that Blackwater was involved in a series of fatal shootings back in 2006. Matthew Degn, an Army veteran hired by the Iraqi Interior Ministry as a policy adviser, told the Post that the 2006 shootings, along with the inability to do anything about them, were a source of huge frustration for the Iraqi government.

Bosses didn't want to expose Iraqi police corruption'

"The original, official role was to be training and mentoring the Iraqi police," Williamson said. He said that it soon became clear that they would be involved in security matters. “This included the handling of sources, which was identical almost to the work I used to do back in Northern Ireland in liaison with British army there. My role was to go to certain Iraqi police stations on a daily basis in the Basra area. But we were told not to report back any intelligence we picked up there, not to hand it over to the British military. Why? Because our bosses and probably, in turn, the FCO didn't want to expose how corrupt and infiltrated by the militia the police were."

British Report Finds Security Firm Withheld Intelligence in Iraq

Two British lawmakers have called for an inquiry into claims that a British-based security firm operating in Iraq withheld intelligence from British troops. The Guardian newspaper says the lawmakers want the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to investigate whether the firm ArmorGroup directed an employee to withhold information from British forces. The probe demand follows a Guardian report that a former British policeman working in 2004 and 2005 for the security firm in southern Iraq was told not to share intelligence gained during visits to local Iraqi police stations. The report says ArmorGroup has "vigorously" denied the claims.

Quote of the day: "I have one wish to ask Santa Claus. Please bring peace to my country. Stop the bombs so I can play with my friends again." – Karrar Haider, 10 year old Baghdad resident