Can Congress End the War?: Democratic Leaders May Prefer to Claim They Tried But Failed
4 Mar 2007
“The shortest route to ending the Iraq war (and preventing additional wars) is almost certainly through Congress,” writes David Swanson. “Influencing the White House directly is unimaginable, and stopping the war through the courts unlikely. Clearly, Congress is the way to go. But what specifically can Congress do? The question is not just whether Congress can cut off the money, but whether the Bush administration can find enough money in other places illegally to continue a war that has never in any sense been legal.”

Rice Picks Neo-Con Champion of Iraq War as Counselor
2 Mar 2007
In a move that has surprised many foreign policy analysts here, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has appointed a prominent neo-conservative hawk and leading champion of the Iraq war to the post of State Department Counselor. Eliot A. Cohen, who teaches military history at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies here and has also served on the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board since 2001, will take up the position next month that was left vacant late last year by Rice’s long-time confidant and “realist” thinker, Philip Zelikow. A close friend and protege of former Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and advisory board member of the American Enterprise Institute, Cohen most recently led the harsh neo-conservative attack on the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, co-chaired by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Democratic Rep. Lee Hamilton.

New Martial Law Powers Threaten Basic Rights
1 Mar 2007
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s new security plan for Baghdad grants military commanders sweeping powers to arrest people and restrict their basic freedoms of speech and association, Human Rights Watch said today. On February 13, al-Maliki issued martial law powers giving military commanders authority to conduct warrantless arrests, monitor private communications, and restrict civil society groups in Baghdad. General Qanbar Hashim, commander of Baghdad operations, announced the decree as part of the Iraqi government’s latest plan to curb the escalating civil war in the country. The decree grants General Qanbar far-reaching powers to conduct searches and seizures without warrants; to arrest, detain and interrogate people; to monitor, search and confiscate “all mail parcels, letters, cables, and wire and wireless communication devices”; and to restrict all public gatherings, including “centers, clubs, organizations, unions, companies, institutions, and offices.”

U.S. to Send Top Refugee Official to Damascus
1 Mar 2007
The State Department plans to send its top refugee official to Damascus in the coming weeks to discuss how best to deal with the estimated 500,000 to one million Iraqis who have sought safe haven in Syria, a Department spokesman confirmed here Thursday. The trip by Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees, and Migration Ellen Sauerbrey would mark the highest-level meeting between the U.S. and Syria in two years, although U.S. officials were careful to stress that Sauerbrey will accompany a senior official from the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. “It would be a mission where you have a U.S. representative paired up with a UNHCR representative, so it’s not a bilateral mission,” stressed State Department spokesman Sean McCormick, who added that the trip will also include a visit to Jordan, which is currently home to some 700,000 Iraqi refugees.

Outrage over Imminent Execution of Iraqi Women
1 Mar 2007
Three young women accused of joining the Iraqi insurgency movement and engaging in “terrorism” have been sentenced to death, provoking protest from rights organizations fearing that this could be the start of more executions of women in post-Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. The execution of the three – Wassan Talib, Zaineb Fadhil and Liqa Omar Muhammad – and a fourth, Samar Sa’ad ‘Abdullah, found guilty of murdering five members of her family, are scheduled to begin Mar. 3, according a member of the Brussells Tribunal. All four are being held in the Khadamiya female prison in northern Baghdad. One of the three alleged “terrorists”, Muhammad, 25, gave birth to a daughter after her arrest and is still nursing the child in prison. A second, Talib, 31, is also in prison with her three-year-old child, according to Amnesty International.

Sorting Out Eighteen Deaths in Ramadi
28 Feb 2007
Eighteen children, ages 4-17, were killed as they played football in Ramadi this week. The confusion and denial surrounding the attack is symptomatic of the awful chaos and lack of solid information in Iraq today.

Rape Cases Emerge From the Shadows
28 Feb 2007
Reports of the gang-rape of 20-year-old Sabrine al-Janabi by three policemen has set off new demands for justice from Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government. Janabi, who lives in the Hai al-Amil area of southern Baghdad with her husband, was taken from her home Feb. 18 to a police station and accused of assisting resistance fighters. Janabi told al-Jazeera channel Feb. 19 that three police commandos raped her in the police garrison after accusing her of cooking for resistance fighters. Stories of rape committed by both U.S. and Iraqi soldiers have appeared since the early days of the U.S. occupation of Iraq. The first stories emerged from inside Abu Ghraib prison. These, along with photographic evidence of sexual humiliation, provoked widespread anger across Iraq. Rape victims in Iraq rarely come forward because they fear public scorn and humiliation. A Muslim woman who acknowledges being raped risks death at the hands of male relatives seeking to restore family honor.

World Bank Mum Over Report of Staff Injury
28 Feb 2007
An Iraqi World Bank staffer has been wounded in Baghdad, according to an inside source in the Bank and an email message from a source on the ground in Iraq, the first casualty for an international organization since a bombing that targeted the Baghdad U.N. headquarters in 2003. The Bank, whose President Paul Wolfowitz is negotiating a contract with a foreign national to work as the Bank’s director in Iraq, has kept the incident under wraps apparently for fear that the news could derail the appointment plans. The Washington-based Bank has so far made no announcement about it and several sources inside the Bank said staff injuries “in the line of duty” should have been announced a least internally.

New security plan makes slow progress
28 Feb 2007
More imagination needs to be injected into Iraq’s newly implemented security plan to put an end to the bloodletting in Baghdad if it is to succeed, a former Iraqi army officer told IRIN. “There should be an imaginative effort to augment the military operations. You can easily deploy thousands of soldiers in the streets and seal off whatever you want in neighborhoods or streets for unlimited periods, but you can’t stop a suicide bomber with a belt of explosives or [bomb-laden] car,” said retired army General Salaheddin Baqer al-Hammad. “What is happening is that Shia militias have now disappeared from the streets to have time to organize themselves while Sunni militants are trying to show that they are still active.”

New Oil Law Seen as Cover for Privatization
27 Feb 2007
The U.S.-backed Iraqi cabinet approved a new oil law Monday that is set to give foreign companies the long-term contracts and safe legal framework they have been waiting for, but which has rattled labor unions and international campaigners who say oil production should remain in the hands of Iraqis. Independent analysts and labor groups have also criticized the process of drafting the law and warned that that the bill is so skewed in favor of foreign firms that it could end up heightening political tensions in the Arab nation and spreading instability. For example, it specifies that up to two-thirds of Iraq’s known reserves would be developed by multinationals, under contracts lasting for 15 to 20 years. This policy would represent a u-turn for Iraq’s oil industry, which has been in the public sector for more than three decades, and would break from normal practice in the Middle East. According to local labor leaders, transferring ownership to the foreign companies would give a further pretext to continue the U.S. occupation on the grounds that those companies will need protection.

Ready to Talk With Iran, Syria
27 Feb 2007
Two weeks after making major concessions for a nuclear accord with North Korea, the administration of President George W. Bush said Tuesday it was prepared to sit down with Iran and Syria as part of a regional conference to stabilize Iraq. In testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, widely considered the leader of the “realist” faction within the administration, announced that Washington will join a “neighbors’ meeting,” convened by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and scheduled for the first half of March, to be followed by ministerial talks one month later which she would attend. “We hope that all governments will seize this opportunity to improve relations with Iraq and to work for peace and stability in the region,” she said. She also described the proposed regional talks that would explicitly embrace Iran and Syria as consistent with a key recommendation last December of the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan task force co-chaired by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Democratic Rep. Lee Hamilton, that had previously been all but rejected by Bush.

Do Something Good
22 Feb 2007
“The Occupation Project is developing, nationally, into a sustained campaign. We welcome participation, and encourage further nonviolent efforts to resist appropriations for military action in Iraq, or against Iran, other than funds to withdraw troops from Iraq. It’s wrong to fund killing and destruction in another country because people in that country oppose the Bush administration’s political agenda for their country. What is more, U.S. soldiers will be killed in carrying out this agenda, and thousands of Iraqi civilians will be killed in ‘collateral damage,’ people who may or may not be opposed to the Bush administration’s political agenda for their country.”

Fallujans Defiant Amidst Chaos
22 Feb 2007
Resistance attacks against U.S. forces have been continuing in Fallujah despite military onslaughts and strong security measures. Two U.S. military onslaughts in 2004 left the city in a shambles and displaced an estimated 250,000 of the 350,000 residents of the city. The military operations, and more that followed have done nothing to reduce resistance in and around Fallujah city in the al-Anbar province to the west of Baghdad. Last month U.S. forces introduced a new phase of ‘security’ along with local Iraqi police, and supported by some local Sunni militias. “The big failure of the U.S. troops in Fallujah came when they began bringing Sunni secret police into the city,” a member of the city council told IPS. “The situation in Ramadi, Hit, Haditha and all over al-Anbar province is now catastrophic.”

Wolfowitz May Bring Bank Back to Iraq
22 Feb 2007
World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz may appoint a new resident director for Iraq soon, a move that sources inside the Bank say could contradict the institution’s policies on engagement in conflict-stricken areas and put his role in the 2003 U.S. invasion back into the limelight. The move by Wolfowitz, the former number two official at the Pentagon and a main architect of the U.S.-led war, likely means the Bank would release new loans to the occupied Arab nation, despite the deteriorating security situation and recent disclosures of massive corruption in reconstruction efforts. “This is exactly what he shouldn’t be doing and what the [World Bank] board was initially afraid that he would do, which is to use the financial resources of the World Bank to take some of the heat off the U.S. Treasury and U.S. policy,” Bea Edwards of the Washington-based watchdog group Government Accountability Project told IPS.

“Outrageous” Armed Raid on Iraqi Journalists’ Union
21 Feb 2007
The International Federation of Journalists today condemned as “outrageous and inexcusable” the action of American soldiers who carried out an armed raid on the Baghdad offices of the Iraq Syndicate of Journalists. United States soldiers caused destruction and havoc last night when they broke into the offices of the Syndicate, which is a member of the IFJ’s global union network. They destroyed furniture, ransacked the offices, arrested state-employed security guards, and confiscated 10 computers and 15 small electricity generators destined for the families of killed journalists.

The Rape of Sabrine…
20 Feb 2007
Iraqi blogger Riverbend responds to testimony by 20-year-old Sabrine Al-Janabi, who recently told the story of her rape by Iraqi security forces on Al Jazeera. Riverbend also responds to the Iraqi Prime Ministers response to the accusations. “I look at this woman and I can’t feel anything but rage,” Riverbend writes. “What did we gain? I know that looking at her, foreigners will never be able to relate. They’ll feel pity and maybe some anger, but she’s one of us. She’s not a girl in jeans and a t-shirt so there will only be a vague sort of sympathy. Poor third-world countries – that is what their womenfolk tolerate. Just know that we never had to tolerate this before. We consoled ourselves after the war with the fact that we at least had a modicum of safety in our homes. Homes are sacred, aren’t they? That is gone.”

Water shortage leads people to drink from rivers
19 Feb 2007
Umm Muhammad Jalal, 39, starts every day walking to a river 7km away from her temporary home in a displacement camp on the outskirts of Fallujah, 70km west of the capital, Baghdad. Because of severe water shortages, she and many others make the daily trip to the river to collect water for all their needs. “For the past four months we have been forced to drink, wash and clean with the river water. There is a dire shortage of potable water in Fallujah and nearby cities,” Umm Muhammad said. “My children are sick with diarrhea but I have no option. They cannot live without water,” she added. “Aid agencies that were helping us with their trucks of potable water are less and less frequent these days for security reasons. For the same reason, the military doesn’t want the [aid] convoys to get too close to some areas.” Umm Muhammad knows how dangerous drinking water from the river can be with associated waterborne diseases. But she is desperate and needs water to survive.

Counting Iraqis to allay fears
19 Feb 2007
As the plight of Iraqi refugees scattered in the Middle East receives increasing international attention, authorities in Amman said they would conduct a survey of Iraqis in the kingdom, including legal and illegal residents. Diplomatic sources told IRIN that Norway-based Fafo Foundation would participate in the survey, thanks to a Norwegian government grant. The announcement of this survey comes at time when international human rights groups have said Jordan is imposing restrictions on Iraqis trying to enter Jordan. Government spokesman Nasser Judeh denied these allegations but admitted that the overwhelming number of refugees in the kingdom was a burden on its fragile economy. “The presence of so many Iraqis or other non-Jordanians does put a strain on our natural resources, but we still accept them. We still welcome them because we have always been a haven and we understand the difficult situation they are facing back in Iraq, and we understand that they need to go somewhere,” said Judeh.

In absence of police, vigilantes take to the streets
19 Feb 2007
Muhammad Azawi, 58, wakes up early every morning and joins fellow vigilantes to patrol their Yarmouk neighborhood of Baghdad. “Our mission is to keep peace in our neighborhood. We keep in contact with the other vigilantes in the neighborhood to make sure there is no danger. Should something untoward happen, we start putting our defense mechanisms in motion,” Azawi said, a retired fireman and father of five. With an increase in sectarian violence in Baghdad and a lack of effective policing, ordinary citizens have been forced to find their own ways of protecting their loved ones. “We take our guns with us only when it is necessary, because we don’t want to give the impression that we are also fighters. Some neighborhoods are attacked by militias and others by insurgents but the result is always the same – the death of dozens of Iraqis on a daily basis,” Azawi added.

Bush Suffers First Iraq Defeat in Congress
18 Feb 2007
In a significant defeat for President George W. Bush, the House of Representatives Friday voted 246 to 182 to “disapprove” his plan to add an estimated 30,000 U.S. troops to the 140,000 marines and soldiers already deployed in Iraq. Seventeen Republicans voted with the majority Democrats to approve the non-binding resolution. The vote, which capped 48 hours of debate over the past four days, constituted the first Congressional denunciation of Bush’s Iraq policy and set the stage for a major battle next month over his request that the legislature approve nearly 100 billion dollars more to finance U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan this year. Backed by polls that show almost two out of three U.S. voters oppose Bush’s plan, often referred to as “the surge”, Democrats are already preparing conditions and restrictions they plan to attach to Bush’s request. If approved, they will make it far more difficult for Bush to add the troops. Friday’s vote also set the stage for another showdown in a rare Saturday session of the Senate where the Democratic leadership is expected to force a vote on the same resolution approved by the House.

Food Security Crisis in Iraq
18 Feb 2007
Local and international aid flooded into Iraq in 2004, the year following the invasion, but much of the supply was blocked off after the kidnapping of many aid activists in the country. The food the Iraqis did get was often not what they needed, or wanted. “Iraqis do not feel at ease receiving food aid when they exported food in the past,” economist Dr. Jassim al-Rikabi told IPS. “Iraq has been a field of aid NGOs since the U.S. occupation began, and many of those NGOs brought foodstuff that is not what Iraqis were used to, but they had to take it due to the need they were facing.” Barley, wheat, pulses and the famous Iraqi dates are staple diet, and are also exported. Common meals in Iraq include rice, lamb, chicken and locally grown vegetables like cucumbers, onions and tomatoes. Under the occupation, Iraqis are getting much of their food from companies in Australia and other countries who assisted the United States during the invasion and occupation. This food has often been of low quality. During July 2006 the Iraqi Ministry of Trade rejected or destroyed thousands of tonnes of contaminated food or food past its expiry date. The food had caused widespread poisoning. Dr. Rikabi holds both the U.S.-backed Iraqi government and U.S. occupation authorities responsible for the failing food supply.

What the Bush Administration Owes Iraq’s Refugees
18 Feb 2007
Finally acknowledging the momentous crisis of Iraqi refugees in the Middle East, the US government has announced it will accept 7,000 Iraqi refugees in the coming year. There are an estimated 750,000 Iraqis living in Jordan alone, with more than one million believed to be living in Syria. Electronic Iraq Amman correspondent Noah Merrill critiques the US pledge and offers a sobering glimpse at a rapidly growing crisis. “In the absence of a real commitment to an internationally supported, truly inclusive political process,” Merrill writes, “the situation in Iraq will continue to get worse and Iraqis will continue to hemorrhage out of their homeland. We know where this path leads: a recent statement by the International Organization for Migration predicts that one million more Iraqis will be displaced in the coming year if the trend continues.”

More violence against journalists amid continuing impunity
18 Feb 2007
Armed groups are threatening press freedom and imposing a reign of terror in Iraq without any attempt being made to identify and punish them, although the number of media employees killed since the start of the war in March 2003 has now reached 148, Reporters Without Borders said today after a new series of attacks on journalists and their assistants.

Regarding the Pain of Others: The Photography of Farah Nosh
14 Feb 2007
What’s absent from Farah Nosh’s series of images taken in Iraq in early 2006 is just as important as what she shows us. Included in the exhibition Inside Out currently showing at the Gage Gallery at Chicago’s Roosevelt University, Nosh’s series is comprised of stark black-and-white portraits of Iraqi amputees, all of them injured as a result of the war. In her deceptively simple images, viewers are first confronted with what is obviously absent and then made to associate more abstract notions of “missing.” Nosh’s subjects stand or sit in sparely decorated rooms, most of them looking at the camera as they would in a studio portrait.