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| Author: | Madeline [ 13 Jan 08, 13:12 ] |
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Water-boarding 'would be torture' BBC |
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| Author: | Madeline [ 13 Jan 08, 13:14 ] |
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Economic boost gives hope to Iraqis BBC |
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| Author: | Madeline [ 17 Jan 08, 12:43 ] |
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Opium fields spread across Iraq as farmers try to make ends meet By Patrick Cockburn The cultivation of opium poppies whose product is turned into heroin is spreading rapidly across Iraq as farmers find they can no longer make a living through growing traditional crops. Afghan with experience in planting poppies have been helping farmers switch to producing opium in fertile parts of Diyala province, once famous for its oranges and pomegranates, north- east of Baghdad. At a heavily guarded farm near the town of Buhriz, south of the provincial capital Baquba, poppies are grown between the orange trees in order to hide them, according to a local source. The shift by Iraqi farmers to producing opium was first revealed by The Independent last May and is a very recent development. The first poppy fields, funded by drug smugglers who previously supplied Saudi Arabia and the Gulf with heroin from Afghanistan, were close to the city of Diwaniyah in southern Iraq. The growing of poppies has now spread to Diyala, which is one of the places in Iraq where al-Qa'ida is still resisting US and Iraqi government forces. It is also deeply divided between Sunni, Shia and Kurd and the extreme violence means that local security men have little time to deal with the drugs trade. The speed with which farmers are turning to poppies is confirmed by the Iraqi news agency al-Malaf Press, which says that opium is now being produced around the towns of Khalis, Sa'adiya, Dain'ya and south of Baladruz, pointing out that these are all areas where al-Qa'ida is strong. The agency cites a local agricultural engineer identified as M S al-Azawi as saying that local farmers got no support from the government and could not compete with cheap imports of fruit and vegetables. The price of fertiliser and fuel has also risen sharply. Mr Azawi says: "The cultivation of opium is the likely solution [to these problems]." Al-Qa'ida is in control of many of the newly established opium farms and has sometimes taken the land of farmers it has killed, said a local source. At Buhriz, American military forces destroyed the opium farm and drove off al-Qa'ida last year but it later returned. "No one can get inside the farm because it is heavily guarded," said the source, adding that the area devoted to opium in Diyala is still smaller than that in southern Iraq around Amara and Majar al-Kabir. After being harvested, the opium from Diyala is taken to Ramadi in western Iraq. There are still no reports of heroin laboratories being established in Iraq, unlike in Afghanistan. Iraq has not been a major consumer of drugs but heroin from Afghanistan has been transited from Iran and then taken to Basra from where it is exported to the rich markets of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the Gulf. Under Saddam Hussein, state security in Basra was widely believed to control local drug smuggling through the city. The growing and smuggling of opium will be difficult to stop in Iraq because much of the country is controlled by criminalised militias. American successes in Iraq over the past year have been largely through encouraging the development of a 70,000-strong Sunni Arab militia, many of whose members are former insurgents linked to protection rackets, kidnapping and crime. Muqtada al-Sadr, the leader of the powerful Shia militia, the Mehdi Army, says that criminals have infiltrated its ranks. The move of local warlords, both Sunni and Shia, into opium farming is a menacing development in Iraq, where local political leaders are often allied to gangsters. The theft of fuel, smuggling and control of government facilities such as ports means that gangs are often very rich. It is they, rather than impoverished farmers, who have taken the lead in financing and organising opium production in Iraq. Initial planting in fertile land west and south of Diwaniya around the towns of Ash Shamiyah, al-Ghammas and Shinafiyah were said to have faced problems because of the extreme heat and humidity. Al-Malaf Press says that it has learnt that the experiments with opium poppy-growing in Diyala have been successful. Although opium has not been grown in many of these areas in Iraq in recent history, some of the earliest written references to opium come from ancient Iraq. It was known to the ancient Sumerians as early as 3400BC as the "Hul Gil" or "joy plant" and there are mentions of it on clay tablets found in excavations at the city of Nippur just east of Diwaniyah. Independent |
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| Author: | Madeline [ 17 Jan 08, 13:10 ] |
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British soldiers hit back at US Afghanistan claims Furious British soldiers hit back at "amazing and unfair" US claims yesterday that they do not know how to fight. Defence Secretary Robert Gates, who is sending 3,200 marines to Afghanistan, said the UK, Canada and Holland have struggled with counterinsurgent operations and "have no experience of it". But British Lt Col Simon Millar said: "I'm disappointed a coalition partner is making comments like that when Brits are dying." One Western diplomat said: "The British have better understanding of the Afghans than Americans." Mirror |
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| Author: | Madeline [ 21 Jan 08, 11:27 ] |
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Afghan trauma for Ross Kemp TV show soldiers Soldiers seen fighting the Taliban on Ross Kemp's TV documentary have been suffering battlefield trauma. The 1st Battalion Royal Anglian Regiment, known as The Vikings, returned in October after six months in Afghanistan. Nine men were killed and 120 injured. Their CO Lt Col Stuart Carver said they were starting to see "cases of psychological injuries and family problems". The battalion's fund committee will meet for the first time on Thursday to consider applications for financial support. Advertisement Click here to find out more! Lt Col Carver said families of men killed and "requests for soldiers who may have lost a limb" could be helped. Ross Kemp in Afghanistan starts on Sky One tonight at 9 pm. Mirror |
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| Author: | Madeline [ 21 Jan 08, 11:31 ] |
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Brit killed and 5 woundedMirror |
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| Author: | Madeline [ 21 Jan 08, 12:05 ] |
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Britain 'as inept as US' in failing to foresee postwar Iraq insurgency · Revelation undermines British blaming Rumsfeld · Experts stressed danger of tribalism to Blair in 2002 Members of the Mahdi army, the militia of cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, march in central Baghdad, Iraq Members of the Mahdi army, the militia of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, march in central Baghdad, Iraq. Photograph: Samir Mizban/AP The government's top foreign policy advisers were as inept as their US counterparts in failing to see that removing Saddam Hussein in 2003 was likely to lead to a nationalist insurgency by Sunnis and Shias and an Islamist government in Baghdad, run by allies of Iran, the Guardian has learned. None of Whitehall's "Arabists" warned Tony Blair of the difficulties which have plagued the occupation. The revelation undermines the British claim that it was US myopia which was to blame for the failure to foresee what would happen in postwar Iraq. "Everyone was unprepared for the aftermath," a former ambassador, who served in the region at the time, told the Guardian. "To my shame I was in the complacent camp [in the Foreign Office]. We underestimated the insurgency. I didn't hear anyone say, 'It'll be a disaster, and it'll all come unstuck'. People felt it was a leap in the dark but not that we were staring disaster in the face." Privately, and in rare cases publicly, British ministers and officials have blamed the chaos of the occupation on blunders in Washington, pointing the finger particularly at Donald Rumsfeld, who was sacked as defence secretary in 2006. The Guardian's researches reveal that Britain's analysts were equally wrong. Christopher Segar, who took part in Whitehall's Iraq Policy Unit's prewar discussions and later headed the British office in Baghdad immediately after the invasion, said: "The conventional view was that Iraq was one of the most Western-oriented of Arab states, with its British-educated, urban and secular professionals. I don't think anyone in London appreciated how far Islamism had gone." Officials alone cannot be blamed. Ministers failed to ask serious questions. Blair never called on the experts for detailed analysis of the consequences of an invasion, officials say. He saw the war as Iraq's liberation and felt any postwar problems would pale in the face of Iraqi delight. Opposition parties urged the government last year to authorise a full-scale independent inquiry into Whitehall's prewar discussions, but Blair refused to. Gordon Brown has taken the same line. The two men claim it would be wrong as long as British troops remain in Iraq. The Conservatives will renew their calls for an inquiry in a House of Lords debate on Iraq on Thursday. The latest revelations are likely to increase pressure on the government. Lord Hurd, former foreign secretary, said last night: "Blair and his colleagues sent British troops to kill and be killed in Iraq without proper planning ... An inquiry is certainly needed to make sure this cannot happen again." In the absence of a public inquiry, the Guardian interviewed a range of recently retired officials who now feel freer to talk about the crucial pre-invasion period. Contrary to the conventional view that the occupation's problems stem mainly from failure to plan for postwar Iraq, they say there was plenty of planning, from how to react to mass refugee flows and a humanitarian crisis to the fallout from a sharp rise in the world price of oil. The real failure, they concede, was one of political analysis. Officials did not study how Iraqis would react to an occupation and what political forces would emerge on top once Saddam was removed. One British diplomat who was based in the region and kept a special watch on the Shia Islamists admitted he did not foresee their postwar rise. "The issue of secularism versus religion was discussed but none of the leaders of Sciri seemed very strong," he said, referring to the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a Shia grouping close to Iran. "I don't think anyone could have formed a view of the relative appeal of Sciri and [the other main Shia bloc] Dawa." He added that the maverick Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose Mahdi army has constantly defied occupation forces "was unheard of". Yet in post-invasion Iraq the two Islamist groupings, Sciri and Dawa, became the biggest electoral parties. One reason for the weakness of British expertise was that, unlike France, Germany and Italy, Britain had not had an embassy in Baghdad since 1991, which meant fewer diplomats with direct knowledge of the country. At the urging of Jack Straw, then foreign secretary, Blair held a brief meeting with six British academic specialists in November 2002. It was never repeated. Charles Tripp of the School of Oriental and African Studies, and author of the standard work, A History of Iraq, said that apart from this meeting in Downing Street, "I can't remember participating in any meaningful seminar on Iraq with the Foreign Office." guardian |
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| Author: | Madeline [ 24 Jan 08, 14:24 ] |
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'George Bush lied 935 times to take USA into Iraq war' By Anton Antonowicz George Bush and his advisers told a pack of lies in the aftermath of September 11, it was claimed yesterday. They are accused of issuing 935 false statements about Iraq in the two years after the terror attacks on the United States in 2001. A report claims they "led the nation to war under decidedly false pretences". Surveys of statements in which Iraq was mentioned were carried out by two nonprofit journalism bodies. President Bush and his administration repeatedly stated Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, or was trying to get them, or had links to al-Qaeda or both, the Centre for Public Integrity and the Fund for Independence in Journalism found. Yesterday a White House spokesman stressed Iraq was a threat under Saddam before the 2003 invasion. He added: "The actions taken in 2003 were based on the collective judgement of intelligence agencies around the world." Mirror |
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| Author: | Madeline [ 24 Jan 08, 17:41 ] |
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Bush budget won't fully fund Iraq war politico |
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| Author: | Madeline [ 24 Jan 08, 17:44 ] |
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Blair's 'dodgy dossier' on Iraq set to be revealed after Government loses appeal on keeping it secret Mail |
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| Author: | Madeline [ 25 Jan 08, 12:39 ] |
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U.S. Asking Iraq for Wide Rights on War NYT |
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| Author: | Madeline [ 25 Jan 08, 12:40 ] |
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In Senate, a White House Victory on Eavesdropping NYT |
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| Author: | Madeline [ 25 Jan 08, 12:58 ] |
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Changes needed' to Army training Iraqi Baha Mousa had 93 separate injuries when he died in 2003 Changes are needed to rectify serious flaws in the training UK soldiers get to deal with Iraqi prisoners, senior army officer Brig Robert Aitken says. In a report he also said some changes had already been made, and he found no evidence of systemic abuse by soldiers. The report was commissioned following allegations of abuse, including the case of Baha Mousa, who died in custody with 93 injuries in 2003. The head of the Army said he was "satisfied" the changes had worked. 'Guilty of abuse' Gen Sir Richard Dannatt, the Army's chief of the general staff, said: "I'm extremely proud of what our soldiers have been doing in Iraq and Afghanistan in very difficult circumstances. "But I take no pride in the activities of a very small number of our soldiers who have been found guilty of abuse in Iraq in 2003, 2004. "We've reflected in this report on those events, we've endeavoured to learn from our experiences, change some of our processes of training and the way we prepare, educate and train our soldiers for these operations. "I'm now satisfied that the standards of behaviour are understood by all our people as they operate today in the difficult circumstances of Iraq and Afghanistan." Brig Aitken's report said lessons needed to be learned from several cases of abuse of Iraqi prisoners. These happened during the volatile period between 2003 and 2004, when the insurgency in Iraq began after the invasion. The report said the changes to the Army's pre-deployment training needed to be made in to prevent further abuses, and set out recommendations for improvements. BBC |
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| Author: | Madeline [ 26 Jan 08, 11:35 ] |
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Army cleared of abusing Iraqis Sun |
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| Author: | Madeline [ 28 Jan 08, 14:43 ] |
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Return to Fallujah Three years after the devastating US assault, our correspondent enters besieged Iraqi city left without clean water, electricity and medicine Related Articles Fallujah is more difficult to enter than any city in the world. On the road from Baghdad I counted 27 checkpoints, all manned by well-armed soldiers and police. "The siege is total," says Dr Kamal in Fallujah Hospital as he grimly lists his needs, which include everything from drugs and oxygen to electricity and clean water. The last time I tried to drive to Fallujah, several years ago, I was caught in the ambush of an American fuel convoy and had to crawl out of the car and lie beside the road with the driver while US soldiers and guerrillas exchanged gunfire. The road is now much safer but nobody is allowed to enter Fallujah who does not come from there and can prove it through elaborate identity documents. The city has been sealed off since November 2004 when United States Marines stormed it in an attack that left much of the city in ruins. Its streets, with walls pock-marked with bullets and buildings reduced to a heap of concrete slabs, still look as if the fighting had finished only a few weeks ago. I went to look at the old bridge over the Euphrates from whose steel girders Fallujans had hanged the burnt bodies of two American private security men killed by guerrillas – the incident that sparked the first battle of Fallujah. The single-lane bridge is still there, overlooked by the remains of a bombed or shelled building whose smashed roof overhangs the street and concrete slabs are held in place by rusty iron mesh. The police chief of Fallujah, Colonel Feisal Ismail Hassan al-Zubai, was trying to show that his city was on the mend. As we looked at the bridge a small crowd gathered and an elderly man in a brown coat shouted: "We have no electricity, we have no water." Others confirmed that Fallujah was getting one hour's electricity a day. Colonel Feisal said there was not much he could do about the water or electricity though he did promise a man that a fence of razor wire outside his restaurant would be removed. Fallujah may be better than it was, but it still has a very long way to go. Hospital doctors confirm that they are receiving few gunshot or bomb blast victims since the Awakening movement drove al-Qa'ida from the city over the past six months, but people still walk warily in the streets as if they expected firing to break out at any minute. Colonel Feisal, a former officer in Saddam Hussein's Special Forces, cheerfully admits that before he was chief of police, "I was fighting the Americans". His brother Abu Marouf, a former guerrilla commander, controls 13,000 fighters of the anti-al-Qa'ida Awakening movement in and around Fallujah. The colonel stressed that the streets of Fallujah were now wholly safe but his convoy drove at speed and was led by a policeman, his face hidden by a white balaclava, on top of a vehicle holding a machine gun and frantically gesturing oncoming vehicles out of the way. The police station is large and protected by concrete and earth barriers. Just as we reached the inner courtyard we saw signs that the battle against al-Qa'ida may be over but arrests go on. From another part of the police station there emerged a line of 20 prisoners, each with his eyes covered by a white blindfold, gripping the back of the clothes of the prisoner in front of him. The prisoners reminded me of photographs of men blinded by gas in the First World War stumbling along behind a single man who could see and who, in this case, was a prison guard. There are new buildings in the main street. I used to eat at a kebab restaurant called Haji Hussein, which was one of the best in Iraq. Then, as the occupation went on, I started attracting a lot of hostile stares. The manager suggested it might be safer if I ate upstairs in an empty room, and soon after it was destroyed by an American bomb. It has now been rebuilt in gaudy colours and seemed to be doing good business. At one time Fallujah had a population of 600,000, but none of the officials in the city seemed to know how many there are now. Col Feisal is hopeful of investment and took us to a white, new building called the Fallujah Business Development Centre, which had been partly funded by a branch of the US State Department. Tall American soldiers were guarding a business development conference. "It has attracted one American investor so far," said a uniformed American adviser hopefully. "My name is Sarah and I am in psychological operations," said another US officer and proudly showed us around a newly established radio Fallujah. At the other end of the city we crossed over the iron bridge built in about 1930 and now the only link with the far side of the Euphrates. There is a modern bridge half a mile down river but it has been taken over by the American army and, say locals, used as a vehicle park. On the far side of the bridge, past beds of tall bullrushes where people escaping the city during the sieges of 2004 tried to hide, there is a building eviscerated by bombs on one side of the road. On the other side is the hospital whose officials US commanders used to accuse of systematically exaggerating the number of those killed by American bombing. When I asked what the hospital lacked Dr Kamal said wearily: "Drugs, fuel, electricity, generators, a water treatment system, oxygen and medical equipment." It was difficult not to think that American assistance might have gone to the hospital rather than the business development centre. Colonel Feisal said things were getting better but he was mobbed by black-clad women shouting that their children had not been treated. "Every day 20 children die here," said one. "Seven in this very room." The doctors said that they were tending their patients as best they could. "The Americans provide us with nothing," said one mother who was cradling a child. "They bring us only destruction." Independent |
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