More Subpoenas Come Down in Watada Case8 Jan 2007In a case that could have repercussions for free speech and press freedom in the United States, the U.S. military has subpoenaed two peace activists and a journalist in its case against Lt. Ehren Watada, the first commissioned officer to be court-martialed for refusing to serve in Iraq. “I’m alarmed,” said Olympia-based activist Phan Nguyen, who moderated a Jun. 7th press conference that marked Lt. Watada’s first public opposition to the Iraq war. “When I was first contacted by the lead prosecutor I was questioned as to conversations I had had with Lt. Watada and how this press conference had come about,” he said.
More Hangings Would Further Jeopardize Respect for Rule of Law7 Jan 2007The planned executions of two senior Ba`ath Party officials convicted in the unfair Dujail trial, coming on the heels of widening international criticism of Saddam Hussein’s hanging, highlight the Iraqi government’s disturbing disregard for human rights and the rule of law, Human Rights Watch said today.
Baghdad 2025: The Pentagon Solution to a Planet of Slums7 Jan 2007“So you think that American troops, fighting in the urban maze of Baghdad’s huge Shiite slum, Sadr City, add up to nothing more than a horrible mistake, an unexpected fiasco?” asks Nick Turse. “The Pentagon begs to differ. While the Joint Forces Command may already be war-gaming the 2015 Battle for Baghdad, right now it looks like the U.S. military will have trouble hanging on there for even a couple of more years. Still, if present plans become reality, odds are U.S. military planners will be attempting to occupy some city, in some fashion, come 2015 and 2025. In the future, as the Army’s new Urban Operations Manual puts it, ‘every Soldier – regardless of branch or military occupational specialty – must be committed and prepared to close with and kill or capture threat forces in an urban environment.’”
Displaced urge Iraqi Red Crescent to return to work7 Jan 2007Displaced families in the capital, Baghdad, have urged the Iraqi Red Crescent Society to continue supporting people who have been displaced as a result of sectarian violence. “We need urgent help because since the [Red Crescent] volunteers in the capital stopped their work, we have been seriously suffering with the lack of assistance, medical care at camps, and especially food,” said Ibraheem Rabia’a, a displaced metal-worker who acts as a spokesperson for a group of 120 families living in abandoned government buildings on the outskirts of the capital. According to the Brookings Institution, 650,000 Iraqis are internally displaced, living in camps or abandoned buildings.
The exodus of academics has lowered educational standards7 Jan 2007“You are on the list of the teachers who are going to be killed this month for not obeying our demands to leave Iraq,” said a hand-written letter which was left at Dr Hamida Bakri’s door. Now the 41-year old professor of gynecology at the college of medicine at the University of Baghdad, is ready to leave the country with her family before death threats become reality. She said two of her colleagues had already been killed. According to the Ministry of Higher Education, at least 280 academics have been killed since the US-led invasion in 2003 by insurgents and militias. “The targeting of such academics is generating a mess in our country. The health and educational systems are depleted of good professionals. Nearly one third of those living in Iraq before 2003 have fled violence,” said Dr. Mustafa Jaboury, a research investigator at the Ministry of Higher Education.
Bush’s Surge Strategy Faces Heavy Opposition5 Jan 2007If, as expected, George W. Bush next week announces his intention to “surge” some 20,000 additional U.S. troops to Iraq to pacify Baghdad and Sunni-dominated al-Anbar province, he may find himself in a tougher fight than he expected even a week ago. Not only are the new Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress lining up in opposition, but a growing number of Republican lawmakers—even including staunch Bush loyalists—are voicing serious reservations about the idea. “Baghdad needs reconciliation between Shiites and Sunnis,” Republican Sen. Norm Coleman, who just returned from Iraq and faces re-election in 2008, told the Los Angeles Times this week. “It doesn’t need more Americans in the crosshairs.”
Execution Memories Refuse To Go Away5 Jan 2007The footage of the execution of Saddam Hussein has generated controversy in Iraq that is refusing to die down. There has been a huge international backlash to the footage. In India millions of Muslims demonstrated against the execution being carried out during the sacred festival of Eid. Across Iraq, Shias seem mostly pleased. “Of course things will be better now that Saddam is dead,” Saed Abdul-Hussain, a cleric from the Shia dominated city Najaf told IPS in Baghdad. “It is like hitting the snake on the head and I hope his followers will hand over their weapons and accept the fact that they lost.” But few believe that Saddam was inspiring the armed resistance.
Time for the United States to recognize Iraq’s humanitarian crisis5 Jan 2007“The State Department’s weekly report on how the United States government is meeting its goals in Iraq omits an important category – emergency aid for the millions of people forcibly uprooted inside the country, or who have fled across borders, to escape sectarian violence and Coalition military operations. Billions in international funds have been allocated for recovery and development projects in Iraq, most of which cannot be implemented because of the violence. Yet humanitarian programs have been largely neglected. The assumption that the domestic situation would stabilize and that the displaced of Iraq would return home has been proved terribly wrong. A reassessment of donor priorities is urgently needed.”
The Surge to Nowhere: Traveling the Planet Neocon Road to Baghdad (Again)4 Jan 2007“Like some neocon Wizard of Oz,” writes Robert Dreyfuss, “in building expectations for the 2007 version of his “Strategy for Victory” in Iraq, President Bush is promising far more than he can deliver. It is now nearly two months since he fired Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, installing Robert Gates in his place, and the White House revealed that a full-scale review of America’s failed policy in Iraq was underway.” Dreyfuss looks closely at the “surge” option and makes his case for why such an escalation would fail: “There’s no question that, in addition to bankrupting the United States, breaking the army and the Marines, and unleashing all-out political warfare at home, [an escalation] would kill perhaps tens of thousands more Iraqis.”
Minorities living tormented days under sectarian violence4 Jan 2007Like other minority members in Iraq, Mardon Matrood, a 44-year-old Assyrian shopkeeper in Baghdad, has had enough of the country’s sectarian violence. Four months ago Matrood’s family failed to pay a ransom of US $50,000 to kidnappers who had abducted his nephew. The nephew was later found dead. Spiraling sectarian violence has threatened the decades-long peaceful coexistence in Iraq between members of different religions, sects and tribes. Now Sunni and Shi’ite extremists are targeting minorities in a bid to force them out of the country.
Iraq Vets Left in Physical and Mental Agony3 Jan 2007On New Year’s Eve, the number of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq passed 3,000. By Tuesday, the death toll had reached 3,004 – 31 more than died in the Sep. 11 attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. But the number of injured has far outstripped the dead, with the Veterans Administration reporting that more than 150,000 veterans of the Iraq war are receiving disability benefits. Advances in military technology are keeping the death rate much lower than during the Vietnam War and World War Two, Dr. Col. Vito Imbascini, an urologist and state surgeon with the California Army National Guard, told IPS, but soldiers who survive attacks are often severely disabled for life.
Hussein’s Execution May Trigger U.N. Backlash3 Jan 2007The swirling controversy over the execution of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is threatening to trigger a backlash at the United Nations. Italy, which has condemned the death penalty as “barbaric”, is trying to bring the issue before a sharply divided world body by calling for a “universal moratorium” on capital punishment. If Italy—which became a non-permanent member of the U.N. Security Council on Jan. 1 and will hold office during 2007-2008—decides to take the initiative, a resolution on the proposed moratorium could go before the 192-member General Assembly.
I lost 11 members of my family in less than one year3 Jan 2007Abbas Dawood calls himself “an adult orphan.” He writes: I’m 29-years-old. I’ve been handicapped since 18 January, 2006, when I lost my leg in an explosion while I was working as a waiter in a Baghdad restaurant. I don’t have anyone now. Neighbours are trying to help me find a place to live because the house was rented and I don’t have money to pay for it, and all my relatives have been killed or are abroad. I would rather die and join my dead family members than go begging for food in the streets.
The inevitable end of Saddam3 Jan 2007“Many truths which the world deserved to know have perished forever with that savage execution,” writes Hasan Abu Nimah, former Permanent Representative of Jordan at the United Nations. “Yet, even if Saddam’s trial had been impeccably handled, the fundamental principle of justice is equality before the law. Such “justice” has no chance of winning over the masses in this region when they observe that punishment is so swift and brutal when the accused is an Arab, Muslim head of state, while other accused former leaders, like Slobodan Milosevic, receive elaborate trials in The Hague.”
Doubling Down on the Imperial Mission in 20072 Jan 2007“Every day,” writes The Nation Institute’s Tom Engelhardt, “it seems, essential choices are being made in our names by our top officials, civilian and military, many of whom, as the year ended, only reaffirmed that our country is headed down an imperial path in the Middle East and elsewhere, a path based on dreams of domination and backed, above all else, by the principle of force. No matter their disagreements over the administration’s Iraq catastrophe, on this, agreement has remained so widespread as to make all discussion of the basics seem beside the point. Despite recent failures on the imperial path, consideration of other paths remains almost inconceivable.”
Networks’ Foreign News Coverage Focused on Iraq2 Jan 2007For the fourth straight year, Iraq dominated foreign affairs coverage by the three major U.S. commercial television network evening news broadcasts during 2006, according to the latest annual review by the authoritative Tyndall Report. Last summer’s conflict between Israel and Hezbollah got second billing, just ahead of coverage of events related to the “global war on terror”, including the largely domestic controversy over U.S. interrogation tactics against terrorist suspects.
Protesting the Hanging…Dangerous Developments1 Jan 2007Responding to Iraqis protesting the hanging of Saddam Hussein, most notably in Sammara, Juan Cole writes: “Folks, this is very bad news. The Askariyah Shrine (it isn’t just a mosque) is associated with the Hidden Twelfth Imam, who is expected by Shiites to appear at the end of time to restore the world to justice.”
Wrapped Around a Bullet1 Jan 2007“It’s hard to put your foot down over something called a ‘supplemental spending bill’ – over a piece of paper, a bit of writing that you didn’t write yourself but are perhaps helping to deliver. My friend’s life was ruined by such a piece of paper. Iraqis are leaving their homes in Iraq by the thousands every day, and prolonging this war will cause more to flee.” Kathy Kelly, writing from Amman, Jordan, encourages civil disobedience in opposition to more spending on the war in Iraq and wraps her call in a story about a friend forced to flee the war and live separated from his family.
‘Illegal’ Execution Enrages Arabs1 Jan 2007The execution of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein carried out at the start of the Muslim festival Eid al-Adha has angered Iraqis and others across the Middle East. Saddam Hussein was hanged on what is held to be a day of mercy and feasting in the Islamic world. It is usually celebrated with the slaughter of a lamb, which represents the innocent blood of Ishmael, who was sacrificed by his father, the prophet Abraham, to honour God. Judge Rizgar Mohammed Amin, the Kurdish judge who had first presided over Saddam Hussein’s trial told reporters that the execution at the beginning of Eid was illegal under Iraqi law, besides violating the customs of Islam.
Britain’s Two Faces on the Death Penalty1 Jan 2007The British government has found a simple way of welcoming the death penalty for Saddam Hussein while saying it opposes the death penalty. After former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was hanged, the government simply said both things, with no clear indication that the government cannot quite welcome what it opposes. “I welcome the fact that Saddam Hussein has been tried by an Iraqi court for at least some of the appalling crimes he committed against the Iraqi people,” foreign secretary Margaret Beckett said after the death sentence was carried out. “He has now been held to account.”
Bloody Years for Journalists in Iraq1 Jan 2007After an estimated 10 percent of active journalists in Iraq died in 2006, the rest are asking themselves what lies ahead for them in the New Year. A report released by the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RWB, also known as Reporters sans Frontieres), on the last day of 2006 described Iraq as “the world’s most dangerous country for the media.” The group said it had called upon Iraqi President Jalal Talabani to put a stop to “hostile accidents” against journalists.
eIraq’s Most Read Stories of 200631 Dec 20062006 was a terrible year for Iraq. The Iraqi blogger Riverbend, in her year-end post, called it the “worst year yet” for Iraqis. Taking a look back at some of Electronic Iraq’s most read articles in 2006, we get a sense for the disaster that has enveloped Iraq in the years since the 2003 invasion (and which has only added to the woes of a country already affected by decades of military and economic warfare). What follows is less a complete review of the events of 2006, but a scrapbook from another year of war and the evolving vision of the war’s architects.
Readers Respond: The Hussein Hanging30 Dec 2006Electronic Iraq has received many reader letters responding to the hanging of Saddam Hussein. We present here a sampling of those letters. Thanks to all who have written in.
Electronic Iraq