Baghdad Bits & Pieces
Post
25/09/06, Patrick Cockburn, A journey into the 'Taliban republic', (Source).
22/09/06, Bernhard Zand, City of Death, The Battle for Baghdad, (Source).
22/09/06, Patrick Cockburn & Jerome Taylor, New terror that stalks Iraq's republic of fear, (Source).
22/09/06, Rupert Cornwell: Nothing the Americans do stops the slide into despair, (Source).
21/09/06, Afif Sarhan, IRAQ: Analysts say violence will continue to increase, (Source).
22/09/06, Bernhard Zand, City of Death, The Battle for Baghdad, (Back).
Once the most progressive city in the Arab world, Baghdad has been ravaged by war and bombings. Everyone wants out, but not everyone can afford to leave -- and car bomb explosions are a daily fact of life.
[photo NASA, A satellite image of Baghdad.]
From an altitude of 15,000 feet, it's just a pale patch on the landscape, a soft and amorphous silhouette, exposed on every flank. It has no protective features: no city wall, no shoreline, no hill from which a fortress might rise. Its edges peter out like the threads of a frayed rug, the sandy brown of houses merging seamlessly with the green of Mesopotamia's meadows. Falluja is visible to the west, Baqubah to the northeast.
Once the fertile fields surrounding Baghdad overflowed with melons, dates and grapes - a rich bounty for the city. Nowadays they ooze death onto the capital's streets. Terrorism and insurgency have taken root in the fields and palm groves between Abu Ghraib and Baghdad International Airport in the western part of the city. Even military pilots dare not approach normally, while civilian planes remain at cruising altitude before dipping into a last-minute descent towards the runway. Only a very narrow strip of airspace is considered secure.
Iraqis arriving from Cairo, Amman or Dubai book the window seats on the left. For good reason. It's the best place to endure the hair-raising nose-dive towards terra firma: keeping your eyes glued to the horizon helps stave off the nausea. In a maneuver known as "the corkscrew," the pilot banks the plane steeply to the left. Fifteen minutes and several thousand feet later, the aircraft finally levels off and prepares to land: conversation stops as the centrifugal forces hit passengers in the stomach. The downward spiral into Baghdad seems to last an eternity.
The city has a modern airport from the 1980s, with one runway long enough for the Concorde. Iraq had lofty ambitions 25 years ago. The arrival and departure board in the Samarra terminal still shows PanAm flights to Chicago and Lufthansa services from Frankfurt; clearly it has not been used in years.
An artificial waterfall cascades from the departure hall to the arrivals area - a flashy glass complex designed when Baghdad was the most progressive city in the Arab world. The country pumped billions into the capital after it first struck oil, with substantial contributions from Old Europe: German engineers built Baghdad's freeways, the French its airport and the Scandinavians its hotels. Eastern European offers of help were turned down; first-class only, please.
Then Baghdad began its descent - and plunged faster and further than today's inbound aircraft. "We have hit rock bottom," says Yusuf Mohammed Afra (60).
Afra's last flight was in 1984. He was returning home from an exchange program for young academics in London. Back then, the West welcomed undergraduates, doctoral students, engineers and artists from Baghdad. They were considered the Middle East's crème de la crème: ambitious, well educated, self-confident and eager to expose themselves to other cultures. Afra had always played with the thought of returning to England. For a long time, it was little more than an idea. Now he has no doubt: "I would jump at the chance."
Afra and his wife own a pharmacy on the Corniche, the riverside boulevard fronting the Tigris. They live just a few hundred yards away. "It's a great blessing that we live so close to our work," he says.
In today's Baghdad, nothing is safe: life and death often hinge on how often people venture out and how far they stray at what time of day; which intersections and bridges they have to cross; which streets they negotiate, and which form of transportation they choose - private car, taxi or minivan.
Afra's daughter Adila (20) is a medical student at the University of Baghdad. When she leaves home of a morning, her father's heart sinks. He calls her on her cell phone five or six times a day to check that all is well. "I am reborn every time she returns safely at the end of the day," he says. Adila is a good student. "We can't leave Baghdad until she has finished her degree."
Until then he will continue to sell medication, almost invariably the wrong medication, because the right treatment isn't available. So a woman with rheumatism, who really needs an infusion, is sent away with a cream. And a man with a heart problem gets a generic from China past its expiration date - despite the German brand-name drug being underlined three times on his prescription.
Psychopharmaceuticals, by contrast, are in good supply. Tranquilizers and antidepressants feature on most prescriptions, even for patients with sprained joints. "A large portion of Baghdad's adult population is on tranquilizers. Valium and Lorazepam are the most common," he says. "We lie awake every night, with the same thought running through our minds: no matter how bad today was, tomorrow is sure to be worse."
Growing gap
Adila's university is in Jadriya across the Tigris. Twice a day she has to cross what has become a military demarcation line. Before the war it was nothing more than a river snaking across the map like elegant calligraphy, but today the Tigris is more like the Berlin Wall. It divides Baghdad into two sectors that seem to be drifting farther apart each day: Rusafa in the east, an area under the growing stranglehold of the Shiites, and Karch to the west, which is populated largely by Sunnis.
The east is dominated by the Mahdi army, the militia loyal to radical Shiite leader Moqtada al-Sadr. Its stronghold is a huge, checkerboard district - built for migrants from the south following the monarchy's collapse in 1958. "Thaura," or revolution, was the first name given to the district, and long-time residents still call it that. Since 1980 it's been known as Saddam City, the name preferred by many Sunnis today. After the 2003 invasion, the district was renamed Sadr City - in honor of Moqtada's father, an influential ayatollah assassinated by Saddam.
[photo AP Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr delivers a sermon to followers during prayers.]
Sadr City and the adjoining neighborhoods have been the target of repeated, devastating suicide bombings. The death toll sometimes reaches 60 or 80 a day, with the poorest being hardest hit: day laborers eking out a living at run-down markets, garbage collectors, police recruits; fathers taking their sons to the local mosque. Women are few and far between on the streets of Baghdad today.
Despite the killing, Shiites consider Sadr City one of Baghdad's safest areas. Here they are among their own. There are no rich people worth kidnapping, no ransoms to be extorted, no stores worth looting. This quarter is home to 2.5 million who live off government food handouts - rancid margarine and inferior imported rice teeming with moths that need to be sifted out.
The Mahdi militia is heavily involved in the sectarian warfare fought out in the city's religiously diverse districts. The most dangerous include Amiriya in western Baghdad, which was built by Saddam Hussein for army officers and low-ranking officials. With its small 1970s villas, stores, ice-cream parlors, schools, mosques, and lush vegetation, it was once a retreat for Iraq's middle classes.
Today Amiriya is unrecognizable. Thirty minutes after sundown the streets are pitch black. There is no electricity; just a few houses have their own generators rumbling out front. In the old days, Baghdad would burst into life at about 8 p.m. Now the rhythms of life are dictated by bombs and gunfire. Nobody dares to leave their homes. A stroll in the dark can be fatal. Every night shots ring out, people die.
After last Ramadan, black fabric banners with hand-lettered epitaphs hung along Amal-al-Schaabi Street. One mourned Bakr Mohammed, shot to death in his grocery store; another Abu Ahmed, killed on his way to his car repair shop; and a third a goldsmith, Scharif Abd al-Chalid, whose shop was blown up. Three killings in one week. One more banner pays tribute to the "martyr Dr. Amal al-Mansuri," the local pharmacist: "In the name of God, the All-Merciful. She was murdered at the hands of filthy criminals and cowards. We all come from God, we all return to God."
Six months after the American invasion, the last store to sell beer in Amiriya closed its doors. Selling alcohol is a mortal sin - as even the district's warring gangs of Shiites and Sunnis agree. Barbershops have disappeared as well, because cutting hair is considered the ultimate in secular depravity. Some barbers have tried their luck in the cell-phone market. But that, too, is a risky business. Cell phones can play music and music is "haram" - immoral and forbidden according to the militias' religious code.
A "For Sale" sign bearing a cell-phone number hangs on the front gate of every fourth or fifth house in Amiriya. In the western part of Baghdad, people are quietly segregating along religious lines. The Shiites are deserting predominantly Sunni districts like Amiriya; the Sunnis turning their backs on others. Each one of them is a casualty of the violence. "The Sunnis shoot faster," says English teacher Hussam Ali, a Shiite. "That's the only difference between them."
Red Zone, Green Zone
In May 2006, the central morgue in Baghdad registered 1,398 deaths. In 2002, the year before the war, the monthly average was 300. The number of unexplained fatalities has multiplied sevenfold. The statistics do not even include victims of suicide bombings; no autopsies are performed on them.
The inconspicuous yellow building behind Medical City in Bab al-Muadham, another of Saddam's architectural showpieces from the 1980s, has been expanded several times since 2003. Two new refrigeration units were installed, and the service area for relatives enlarged. The electrical generators chug around the clock.
[photo AFP An Iraqi sits amidst the rubble at the site where insurgents slaughtered at least 57 people in a bomb and missile attack in August in a busy Baghdad neighborhood.]
Iraqi victims of Baghdad's carnage end up in Medical City, ferried there by residents, ambulances or the militias themselves. Most American casualties are flown to the 86th Combat Support Hospital in the Green Zone - on the site of the former Republican Palace. The sound of helicopters is usually a bad omen. Yet more bloodshed - the victims, the dead and wounded, are on their way.
The Green Zone is in Baghdad's city center, lodged between the two spheres of influence emerging to the east and west. No other place in Baghdad is as silent, as eerie, as surreal as the four-square-mile enclave.
In the morning, before the summer heat engulfs the city, diplomats at the U.S. embassy hook up their iPods and head out for a jog. At lunchtime, employees of American companies grab a hamburger and a soft drink on the fast-food strip behind the embassy.
Next door, a supermarket sells T-shirts, shaving cream, sun screen lotion and even Iraq memorabilia: red, Coca-Cola-style baseball caps with "Enjoy Baghdad" logos, decals sporting the embassy crest, key chains with the warning displayed on the Iraqi army's vehicles: "Keep back 100 meters or be shot."
In the evening Americans gather at the cafeteria of a U.S. military supplier. Proper dress and stringent hygiene are mandatory. Sandals are not permitted. Visitors are required to wash their hands with antibacterial solution at rows of sinks in the foyer. A Pentagon employee has her own sardonic name for the Green Zone: a freak show. She is one of the few here to have left the compound - on three forays into Baghdad's Red Zone.
The numerous checkpoints in the Green Zone are manned by private security companies that employ guards from all over the world - from places like Nepal, Sri Lanka and the Fiji Islands. One of the largest contingents hails from the Republic of Georgia. The Iraqis in the Green Zone are either members of their own government, U.S. embassy employees or people who clean the offices of foreign companies. Any others hoping to get into the Green Zone need plenty of patience.
Mai Abd al-Madschid is 62. She is wearing a black abaya; a bead of sweat trickles down her forehead. She has been standing at the main gate to the Green Zone for half an hour now, and the temperature has climbed to over 100°F in the shade. But the only cover is already taken by two Georgian security staff - under the guardhouse awning. They don't understand a single syllable of the war of words that the retired teacher is waging with the sole Iraqi guard.
Abd al-Madschid's husband has been shot to death. Her efforts to explain are falling on deaf ears. As she talks, the guard turns away and douses his head with a bottle of water. He lets two or three young people pass and then looks back at her vacantly, "Yes. And then what?"
"I've already told you! My husband was shot during a police raid," she rolls out her story again. "I'm here to file a petition to the compensation panel. I'm entitled to damages." She hands him a meticulously prepared folder. "Never heard of this panel," the soldier says.
[photo AFP, Iraqis mourn over the coffin of Sheikh Bakr Hussein al-Samarraei during his funeral in the northern city of Samarra in August. Samarraei was killed in Baghdad by unknown gunmen.]
Teresa doesn't have to wait. As head receptionist at the Rashid Hotel, she has all the papers she needs. She doesn't want her last name in print; working at the Rashid has become a health hazard. High-ranking government officials and the staff of the special tribunal trying Saddam Hussein have taken rooms in the hotel. Before the war, foreign delegations and journalists stayed there. Teresa has a good memory. She recognizes her old guests at a glance.
After the war, she was subjected to a rigorous security screening. The Rashid was formerly controlled by Saddam's intelligence services; and employees like Teresa were suspected of being on their payroll. Most of them were cleared, and just about everyone rehired - albeit at a humiliating price. Teresa worked for 15 years at the Rashid. She was proud to be the face of her country's finest hotel. Now she has to wear an ID issued by an American security company. It says: "Ground-floor access only."
One of her colleagues died in February of 2005. On the way back from the funeral, Ghasi Ali Ismail, the hotel's longstanding director, was shot to death. His deputy, who had started out as a bookkeeper over 25 years before and worked his way up through the ranks, should have taken over at the helm. Unfortunately for him, he was a Sunni; the new government wanted a Shiite.
As a Chaldean, Teresa belongs to Iraq's Christian minority. She is keenly aware of the tensions mounting at the hotel. Her church has lost many of its members; Christians no longer have any say. Those who sat out the sanctions have even more reason to leave now. "I'm 52 and not expecting to find a husband anymore," Teresa laughs.
She keeps a parrot on her balcony overlooking the Tigris; it should live to a ripe old age. And her church needs someone to help at the orphanage; the children of Baghdad deserve a brighter future. "I've already lived through three wars in this city, so I'm staying put," she says.
22/09/06, Patrick Cockburn & Jerome Taylor, New terror that stalks Iraq's republic of fear, (Back).
Arbil: The republic of fear is born again. The state of terror now gripping Iraq is as bad as it was under Saddam Hussein. Torture in the country may even be worse than it was during his rule, the United Nation's special investigator on torture said yesterday.
"The situation as far as torture is concerned now in Iraq is totally out of hand," said Manfred Nowak. "The situation is so bad many people say it is worse than it had been in the times of Saddam Hussein."
The report, from an even-handed senior UN official, is in sharp contrast with the hopes of George Bush and Tony Blair, when in 2003 they promised to bring democracy and respect for human rights to the people of Iraq. The brutal tortures committed in the prisons of the regime overthrown in 2003 are being emulated and surpassed in the detention centres of the present US- and British-backed Iraqi government. "Detainees' bodies show signs of beating using electric cables, wounds in different parts of their bodies including in the head and genitals, broken bones of legs and hands, electric and cigarette burns," the human rights office of the UN Assistance Mission in Iraq says in a new report.
The horrors of the torture chamber that led to Saddam Hussein's Iraq being labelled "The Republic of Fear", after the book of that title by Kanan Makiya, have again become commonplace. The bodies in Baghdad's morgue " often bear signs of severe torture including acid-induced injuries and burns caused by chemical substances, missing skin, broken bones (back, hands and legs), missing eyes and wounds caused by power drills or nails", the UN report said. Those not killed by these abuses are shot in the head.
Human rights groups say torture is practised in prisons run by the US as well as those run by theInterior and Defence ministries and the numerous Sunni and Shia militias.
The pervasive use of torture is only one aspect of the utter breakdown of government across Iraq outside the three Kurdish provinces in the north. In July and August alone, 6,599 civilians were killed, the UN says.
One US Army major was quoted as saying that Baghdad is now a Hobbesian world where everybody is at war with everybody else and the only protection is self-protection.
Iraq is in a state of primal anarchy. Paradoxically, the final collapse of security this summer is masked from the outside world because the country is too dangerous for journalists to report what is happening. Some 134 journalists, mostly Iraqi, have been killed since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.
The continuing rise in the number of civilians killed violently in Iraq underlines the failure of the new Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki installed in May after intense US and British pressure. The new government shows no signs of being more effective than the old. "It is just a government of the Green Zone," said an Iraqi official, referring to the fortified zone in central Baghdad housing the Iraqi government as well as the US and British embassies.
In an attempt to regain control of the capital and reduce sectarian violence, government and US troops launched "Operation Together Forward" in mid-July, but it seems to have had only marginal impact for a couple of weeks. The number of civilians killed in July was 3,590 and fell to 3,009 in August but was on the rise again at the end of the month.
The bi-monthly UN report on Iraq is almost the only neutral and objective survey of conditions in the country. The real number of civilians killed in Iraq is probably much higher because, outside Baghdad, deaths are not recorded. The Health Ministry claims, for instance, that in July nobody died violently in al-Anbar province in western Iraq, traditionally the most violent region, but this probably means the violence was so intense that casualty figures could not be collected from the hospitals.
Nobody in Iraq is safe. Buses and cars are stopped at checkpoints and Sunni or Shia are killed after a glance at their identity cards. Many people now carry two sets of identity papers, one Shia and one Sunni. Car number plates showing that it was registered in a Sunni province may be enough to get the driver shot in a Shia neighbourhood. Sectarian civil war is pervasive in Baghdad and central Iraq. Religious processions are frequently attacked. On 19 and 20 August, a Shia religious pilgrimage came under sustained attack that left 20 dead and 300 wounded.
The Iraqi state and much of society have been criminalised. Gangs of gunmen are often described on state television as "wearing police uniforms" . One senior Iraqi minister laughed as he told The Independent: " Of course they wear police uniforms. They are real policemen."
On 31 July, for instance, armed men in police uniforms driving 15 police vehicles kidnapped 26 people in an area of Baghdad known as Arasat that used to be home to several of the capital's better restaurants. Gunmen dressed in police uniforms had also kidnapped the head of Iraq's Olympic Committee, Ammar Jabbar al-Saadi, and 12 others, in the centre of Baghdad. Ransom demands were made. The US military suspected that Baghdad police's serious crime squad may have been responsible and stormed its headquarters to search vainly for the kidnap victims in its basement.
It has long been a matter of amusement and disgust in Iraq that government ministers travel abroad to give press conferences claiming that the insurgency is on its last legs. One former minister said: "I know of ministers who have never been to their ministries but get their officials to bring documents to the Green Zone where they sign them."
Beyond the Green Zone, Iraq has descended into murderous anarchy. For several days this month, the main road between Baghdad and Basra was closed because two families were fighting over ownership of an oilfield.
Government ministries are either Shia or Sunni. In Baghdad this month, a television crew filming the morgue had to cower behind a wall because the Shia guards were fighting a gun battle with the Sunni guards of the Electricity Ministry near by.
Then... and now
1998 "The Commission on Human Rights noted...massive and extremely grave violations of human rights and of international humanitarian law by the Government of Iraq... hundreds of executions, some of which may have been extrajudicial executions... Torture and ill-treatment continued to be widespread."
2006 "The situation as far as torture is concerned is now completely out of hand... many people say that it is worse than in the times of Saddam Hussein. You find bodies with very heavy and serious torture marks. "
1998 In July a group of six people, including one woman, were sentenced to death by hanging on charges of organised prostitution, involvement in the white slave trade and smuggling alcohol to Saudi Arabia.
2006 On 7 September, the Iraqi authorities announced the execution by hanging at Abu Ghraib prison of 27 prisoners, including one woman, convicted of terror and criminal charges. It is the first mass execution since Saddam Hussein's rule.
22/09/06, Rupert Cornwell: Nothing the Americans do stops the slide into despair, (Back).
They have organised elections, and pushed through a new democratically-ratified constitution that has given birth to a national government with a true mandate. They have sent more of their own troops, and trained the locals. They have sacrificed some 2,700 of their servicemen and over $300bn (£1.6bn) of their taxpayers' money. But nothing the Americans can do has stopped post-Saddam Iraq's long slide into chaos and despair.
President Bush and his top aides still insist civil war has not broken out. That, however, is a matter of semantics after the latest UN report that almost 6,600 people died in sectarian violence in the last two months for which statistics are available - an "unprecedented" 3,590 in July, followed by 3009 in August.
That is 108 killings every day. As Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary General, put it this week during the final General Assembly of his tenure: "If current patterns of alienation and violence persist much longer, there is a grave danger that the Iraqi state will break down, possibly in the midst of full-scale civil war."
That was not what the Bush administration intended when Nuri al-Maliki became prime minister four months ago. The security situation has only worsened since and basic services have become ever more intermittent. Even the most upbeat US commanders admit, if Baghdad cannot be saved, Iraq is lost.
That fate, according to a leaked recent report by the Marines' top intelligence officer in Iraq, has befallen Anbar province, home of the "Sunni Triangle" - which accounts for nearly a third of the country.
The report, which has not been seriously disputed by the Pentagon, concludes that nothing US forces at their present levels can do in Anbar will bring it under control. The writ of the central government does not run there. In Baghdad too, nothing seems to work. Earlier this summer Mr Malaki announced a massive security blitz in the capital by US and Iraqi troops.
The upshot has been only greater violence in a city where private militias rule entire neighbourhoods. Now there is talk of a fortified cordon around the city - but scant prospect that this initiative will succeed.
Not surprisingly, muttering here against Mr Maliki grows more audible by the day. President Bush was being "driven crazy" by Mr Maliki's indecisiveness, The New York Times reported on Wednesday, quoting a former senior US official. The pictures of a smiling Mr Maliki on his recent visit to Iran, apparently getting on famously with Washington's current nemesis, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, cannot have improved President Bush's humour.
The killings spare no one. Pentagon figures show that attacks between May and August this year were running at 792 a week, up 24 per cent from the previous quarter. Sectarian violence is increasing, but so too are attacks on US troops.
The hope was to reduce US forces in Iraq in this US election year. Instead they have been increased, from 127,000 in January to 144,000 now. Each day, two or three more American soldiers die. Since the March 2003 invasion over 2,690 have been lost.
Three decades ago, a decorated young veteran who would become the Democratic presidential candidate in 2004 famously asked: "How do you ask a man to become the last man to die for a mistake?" The words of John Kerry to a Congressional Committee that was probing the Vietnam war now apply to Iraq - to American soldiers and Iraqi civilians alike.
21/09/06, Afif Sarhan, IRAQ: Analysts say violence will continue to increase, (Back).
Coalition forces say they will not leave Iraq until local forces are fully trained to manage on their own.
BAGHDAD, 21 Sep 2006 (IRIN) - Violence and the use of torture has increased exponentially in Iraq since the United States-led occupation of the country began in 2003, according to local analysts.
“Violence in Iraq has destroyed the integrity and structure of the country. Development and reconstruction has been delayed and, in addition, the human rights situation, which was the reason for the US invasion in Iraq, has worsened when compared to [former President] Saddam Hussein’s regime,” said Barak Ibrahim, a political analyst and professor at Mustansiryiah University.
Ibrahim and other specialists at the university say that violence in Iraq will continue despite different reconciliation plans being proposed because insurgency and militia actions are a response to the US-led occupation.
“If we go deep into the cause that prompted such violence we will find in the end that the presence, especially, of US-troops in the country has generated revolt and loss of patience by fighters and only when they [the occupation forces] leave the country can we start to speak about improvement in security issues,” Ibrahim said.
The analysts made their remarks following the release on Wednesday of the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) report which stated that human rights violations were rapidly escalating in Iraq and that the death toll was worryingly high.
“Human rights violations, particularly against the right to life and personal integrity, continued to occur at an alarming daily rate in Iraq,” said the UNAMI report.
The US continues to assert that the removal of Saddam Hussein’s government was necessary as it posed a threat. “Saddam's regime posed a risk that the world could not afford to take. The world is safer because Saddam Hussein is no longer in power,” said US president George Bush in a speech on 11 September.
Bodies were severely tortured
According to the report, bodies sent to the capital’s morgue habitually bore signs of severe torture, including acid-induced injuries, burns caused by chemical substances, missing skin, broken bones, backs, hands and legs, missing eyes and teeth and wounds caused by power drills or nails.
The Iraqi authorities confirmed that most of the bodies that were found in the past six months bore signs of serious torture.
“Unfortunately, the information released by UNAMI in its report is true and reflects the reality of Iraq today. Most of the bodies found were tortured and were sometimes even impossible to recognise,” said Dr Fa'aq Amin, director of the Institute for Forensic Medicine at the Ministry of Health.
UNAMI’s report said that 3,590 civilians were killed in July and 3,009 in August. The Iraqi Health Ministry said that of those murdered in July, some 1,855 were killed because of sectarian or political violence, and another 1,583 died as a result of bombings and shootings.
Baghdad’s morgue reported nearly 1,800 killings in July and 2,000 in August in the capital alone.
“It is possible that the numbers could be higher than those reported at our morgue because not all killings in the country are registered with us,” Amin added.
More than 20,600 Iraqi civilians have died in attacks since January according to UNAMI. Between 43,269 and 48,046 civilians were killed since the US-led occupation began in March 2003, according to the NGO Iraq Body Count.
“Human rights violation is not only a crime against humanity but also the deprivation of a life which Iraqis have dreamt of during Saddam Hussein’s regime but which they cannot have because of insurgency and terrorism,” said Khuman Ahmed, human rights adviser at the Ministry of Human Rights.
Honour killings
The UNAMI report also warned of the increasing number of honour crimes against women in the country.
“In their fight against generalised violence, central, regional and local authorities should provide greater protection to women for crimes committed within the family, including all types of violence against women and girls on the grounds of honour,” the report said.
“The killing of a woman in Iraq will not command the same media attention as that of a man. Honour killing is a terror that women in Iraq have been suffering from and those responsible should pay drastically for that,” said Nuha Salim, spokesperson for the Baghdad-based NGO Women Freedom Organisation (WFO).
The release of UNAMI’s report came a day before the handing over of security control by British and Italian troops to Iraqi forces in the province of Dhi Qar in southern Iraq on Thursday.
It was the second of 18 provinces to have foreign troops withdrawn, the first one being neighbouring Muthanna in July 2006. Dhi Qar has experienced a minimal number of attacks and has been under the protection of coalition forces since 2003.
However, analysts are sceptical that the withdrawal of foreign troops from the province would bring long-term stability.
“The Dhi Qar handover was a good beginning but will not make any difference to insurgents and militias. The base still remains and the US military have no idea when they are going to leave our country. Every day the date for withdrawal is postponed causing more death and violence as a result of generalised revolts,” Professor Ibrahim said.
The US administration says that it will not pull out its forces until Iraqi forces are sufficiently trained to take over. “We're training Iraqi troops so they can defend their nation,” said Bush in his 11 September speech. “We're helping Iraq's unity government grow in strength and serve its people. We will not leave until this work is done.
“Whatever mistakes have been made in Iraq, the worst mistake would be to think that if we pulled out, the terrorists would leave us alone. They will not leave us alone. They will follow us. The safety of America depends on the outcome of the battle in the streets of Baghdad.”
Insurgents say they will not change their ways until all coalition troops have left the country.
“Only when we see the Americans get out of Iraq will we put our weapons in the rubbish heap,” said Abu Khalifa, a spokesperson for the militia Muhammad Army.
25/09/06, Patrick Cockburn, A journey into the 'Taliban republic', (Back).
A journey into the 'Taliban republic' where the militias rule unchallenged, Diyala, north east Iraq.
Civil war is raging through the Iraqi countryside. Sunni insurgents have largely taken control of the province of Diyala, where local leaders believe the insurgents are close to establishing a "Taliban republic".
Officials in the strategically important province - composed of a mixture of Sunnis and Shias with a Kurdish minority - have no doubt about what is happening. Lt-Col Ahmed Ahmed Nuri Hassan, a weary-looking commander of the federal police, says: "Now there is an ethnic civil war and it is getting worse every day."
At the moment, the Sunni seem to be winning.
As the violence has escalated over the past three years, it has become too dangerous for journalists to find out what is happening in the provinces outside the capital. The UN said last week that 5,106 civilians were killed in Baghdad in July and August and 1,493 in the provinces outside it.
Insurgents have cut the roads out of the capital to the west and the north. As I travelled through the provinces of this vast, war-torn country, despite keeping to the relatively calm tongue of Kurdish territory that extends through the countryside almost to Baghdad, I was keenly aware that it is not a place to make a mistake in map reading.
We drove for a couple of hours beside the Diyala river which rises in Iran's Zagros mountains and looks like a smaller version of the Nile, a streak of vivid green vegetation running through dun-coloured semi-desert. Then we turned abruptly east before the road entered the strongly insurgent district of As-Sadiyah.
What could have happened if we had continued down the main road was evident at Lt-Col Hassan's headquarters. In one corner of the courtyard was the wreckage of a blue-and-white police vehicle, ripped apart by a bomb. "Five policemen were killed in it when it was blown up at an intersection in As-Sadiyah two months ago," a policeman told us. "Only their commander survived but both his legs were amputated."
In Diyala, it is possible to see the anguished break-up of Iraq at ground level. Going by the accounts of police and government officials in the province, the death toll outside Baghdad may be far higher than previously reported. Ibrahim Hassan Bajalan, the head of Diyala's provincial council - who had survived an attempt to assassinate him in Baquba with a mortar attack the previous day - says he believed that "on average, 100 people are being killed in Diyala every week."
The latest were three civilians shot dead yesterday by unidentified assailants. Behind them, as the killers sped away in their car through the streets of Baquba, the families of the dead were left to grieve, falling to their knees and throwing their arms open to the sky in despair.
Many of those who die disappear for ever, thrown into the Diyala river or buried in date palm groves and fruit orchards. The reason for their killings can be spurious, and people have become careful to avoid incurring the wrath of local Sunni insurgents who control much of the province according to strict Islamic laws. "They have even banned the sale of cigarettes in the provincial capital, Baquba, and kill anybody selling cigarettes," Mr Bajalan said. "I have to bring in cigarettes from other places to give them to council members who are smokers."
In a house in Khanaqin, a Kurdish enclave in the north-east of the province, Nazar Ali Mirza, a sorrowful-looking middle-aged woman, described how she had fled too late from Muqdadiyah, the Sunni-dominated town of 200,000 people where she was born. She was caught by surprise when death squads began to target Kurds and Shias in her neighbourhood. Her eldest son, Khalil Mohammed Ahmed, a taxi driver, went out to collect a washing machine in March and never came back. She is beginning to assume he is dead but no body was discovered.
"Kurds and Shias were being driven out of our district," she said. "Men in black masks came to me and said they would kill my sons, even if they flew up into the sky, unless I moved away." One of her other sons was a policeman permanently disabled in a bomb explosion.
Mrs Mirza and her family are among 300,000 Iraqis forced to flee their homes since the beginning of the year. Everywhere, minorities frightened for their lives are on the move. "Nobody waits any longer to find out if a threat is real," says Mamosta Mohsin, the leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan in Khanaqin which, in effect, runs the town. "Even if the threat is organised by two children, people will run." Most often, the threat is real. Lt-Col Hassan has a collection of files in which the names of the latest refugees are registered. Most of them are Kurds coming from Baghdad, Ramadi, Baquba and the rest of the country.
He hands over a piece of paper showing how the number of refugee families arriving in this small town had risen from 29 in January to 318 in June. It was still 239 in August.
Lt-Col Hassan says that neither Sunni nor Shia are particularly well organised: "It is not like Lebanon, because most of the killing is done by local or tribal militias." The problem is not that the insurgents are strong but that the government forces are so weak. A division of 7,000 government soldiers is in Diyala, he said, "but they are all Shias and only arrest Sunnis."
Mr Bajalan confirms that the army is weak in Diyala, saying most of it is tied down at checkpoints. He reckons there is one soldier for every 50 square kilometres of the province. "The soldiers are badly armed," he says.
"They just have Kalashnikovs while the terrorists have rocket launchers and heavy machine guns. When they attack, they always kill 10 or 15 army or police."
The Americans do have a base near Baquba, and act in a supportive role when they are asked to. "That isn't much use against guerrillas," says Mr Bajalan. "They've all gone home by the time the Americans arrive."
Baghdad announced signal successes around Baquba last week, including the capture of leaders of two Sunni insurgent groups. But nobody in Diyala had heard about it, and, without exception, they expected the civil war to grow in intensity.
Patrick Cockburn's The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq will be published by Verso on 9 October
(Back)
22/09/06, Bernhard Zand, City of Death, The Battle for Baghdad, (Source).
22/09/06, Patrick Cockburn & Jerome Taylor, New terror that stalks Iraq's republic of fear, (Source).
22/09/06, Rupert Cornwell: Nothing the Americans do stops the slide into despair, (Source).
21/09/06, Afif Sarhan, IRAQ: Analysts say violence will continue to increase, (Source).
22/09/06, Bernhard Zand, City of Death, The Battle for Baghdad, (Back).
Once the most progressive city in the Arab world, Baghdad has been ravaged by war and bombings. Everyone wants out, but not everyone can afford to leave -- and car bomb explosions are a daily fact of life.
[photo NASA, A satellite image of Baghdad.]
From an altitude of 15,000 feet, it's just a pale patch on the landscape, a soft and amorphous silhouette, exposed on every flank. It has no protective features: no city wall, no shoreline, no hill from which a fortress might rise. Its edges peter out like the threads of a frayed rug, the sandy brown of houses merging seamlessly with the green of Mesopotamia's meadows. Falluja is visible to the west, Baqubah to the northeast.
Once the fertile fields surrounding Baghdad overflowed with melons, dates and grapes - a rich bounty for the city. Nowadays they ooze death onto the capital's streets. Terrorism and insurgency have taken root in the fields and palm groves between Abu Ghraib and Baghdad International Airport in the western part of the city. Even military pilots dare not approach normally, while civilian planes remain at cruising altitude before dipping into a last-minute descent towards the runway. Only a very narrow strip of airspace is considered secure.
Iraqis arriving from Cairo, Amman or Dubai book the window seats on the left. For good reason. It's the best place to endure the hair-raising nose-dive towards terra firma: keeping your eyes glued to the horizon helps stave off the nausea. In a maneuver known as "the corkscrew," the pilot banks the plane steeply to the left. Fifteen minutes and several thousand feet later, the aircraft finally levels off and prepares to land: conversation stops as the centrifugal forces hit passengers in the stomach. The downward spiral into Baghdad seems to last an eternity.
The city has a modern airport from the 1980s, with one runway long enough for the Concorde. Iraq had lofty ambitions 25 years ago. The arrival and departure board in the Samarra terminal still shows PanAm flights to Chicago and Lufthansa services from Frankfurt; clearly it has not been used in years.
An artificial waterfall cascades from the departure hall to the arrivals area - a flashy glass complex designed when Baghdad was the most progressive city in the Arab world. The country pumped billions into the capital after it first struck oil, with substantial contributions from Old Europe: German engineers built Baghdad's freeways, the French its airport and the Scandinavians its hotels. Eastern European offers of help were turned down; first-class only, please.
Then Baghdad began its descent - and plunged faster and further than today's inbound aircraft. "We have hit rock bottom," says Yusuf Mohammed Afra (60).
Afra's last flight was in 1984. He was returning home from an exchange program for young academics in London. Back then, the West welcomed undergraduates, doctoral students, engineers and artists from Baghdad. They were considered the Middle East's crème de la crème: ambitious, well educated, self-confident and eager to expose themselves to other cultures. Afra had always played with the thought of returning to England. For a long time, it was little more than an idea. Now he has no doubt: "I would jump at the chance."
Afra and his wife own a pharmacy on the Corniche, the riverside boulevard fronting the Tigris. They live just a few hundred yards away. "It's a great blessing that we live so close to our work," he says.
In today's Baghdad, nothing is safe: life and death often hinge on how often people venture out and how far they stray at what time of day; which intersections and bridges they have to cross; which streets they negotiate, and which form of transportation they choose - private car, taxi or minivan.
Afra's daughter Adila (20) is a medical student at the University of Baghdad. When she leaves home of a morning, her father's heart sinks. He calls her on her cell phone five or six times a day to check that all is well. "I am reborn every time she returns safely at the end of the day," he says. Adila is a good student. "We can't leave Baghdad until she has finished her degree."
Until then he will continue to sell medication, almost invariably the wrong medication, because the right treatment isn't available. So a woman with rheumatism, who really needs an infusion, is sent away with a cream. And a man with a heart problem gets a generic from China past its expiration date - despite the German brand-name drug being underlined three times on his prescription.
Psychopharmaceuticals, by contrast, are in good supply. Tranquilizers and antidepressants feature on most prescriptions, even for patients with sprained joints. "A large portion of Baghdad's adult population is on tranquilizers. Valium and Lorazepam are the most common," he says. "We lie awake every night, with the same thought running through our minds: no matter how bad today was, tomorrow is sure to be worse."
Growing gap
Adila's university is in Jadriya across the Tigris. Twice a day she has to cross what has become a military demarcation line. Before the war it was nothing more than a river snaking across the map like elegant calligraphy, but today the Tigris is more like the Berlin Wall. It divides Baghdad into two sectors that seem to be drifting farther apart each day: Rusafa in the east, an area under the growing stranglehold of the Shiites, and Karch to the west, which is populated largely by Sunnis.
The east is dominated by the Mahdi army, the militia loyal to radical Shiite leader Moqtada al-Sadr. Its stronghold is a huge, checkerboard district - built for migrants from the south following the monarchy's collapse in 1958. "Thaura," or revolution, was the first name given to the district, and long-time residents still call it that. Since 1980 it's been known as Saddam City, the name preferred by many Sunnis today. After the 2003 invasion, the district was renamed Sadr City - in honor of Moqtada's father, an influential ayatollah assassinated by Saddam.
[photo AP Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr delivers a sermon to followers during prayers.]
Sadr City and the adjoining neighborhoods have been the target of repeated, devastating suicide bombings. The death toll sometimes reaches 60 or 80 a day, with the poorest being hardest hit: day laborers eking out a living at run-down markets, garbage collectors, police recruits; fathers taking their sons to the local mosque. Women are few and far between on the streets of Baghdad today.
Despite the killing, Shiites consider Sadr City one of Baghdad's safest areas. Here they are among their own. There are no rich people worth kidnapping, no ransoms to be extorted, no stores worth looting. This quarter is home to 2.5 million who live off government food handouts - rancid margarine and inferior imported rice teeming with moths that need to be sifted out.
The Mahdi militia is heavily involved in the sectarian warfare fought out in the city's religiously diverse districts. The most dangerous include Amiriya in western Baghdad, which was built by Saddam Hussein for army officers and low-ranking officials. With its small 1970s villas, stores, ice-cream parlors, schools, mosques, and lush vegetation, it was once a retreat for Iraq's middle classes.
Today Amiriya is unrecognizable. Thirty minutes after sundown the streets are pitch black. There is no electricity; just a few houses have their own generators rumbling out front. In the old days, Baghdad would burst into life at about 8 p.m. Now the rhythms of life are dictated by bombs and gunfire. Nobody dares to leave their homes. A stroll in the dark can be fatal. Every night shots ring out, people die.
After last Ramadan, black fabric banners with hand-lettered epitaphs hung along Amal-al-Schaabi Street. One mourned Bakr Mohammed, shot to death in his grocery store; another Abu Ahmed, killed on his way to his car repair shop; and a third a goldsmith, Scharif Abd al-Chalid, whose shop was blown up. Three killings in one week. One more banner pays tribute to the "martyr Dr. Amal al-Mansuri," the local pharmacist: "In the name of God, the All-Merciful. She was murdered at the hands of filthy criminals and cowards. We all come from God, we all return to God."
Six months after the American invasion, the last store to sell beer in Amiriya closed its doors. Selling alcohol is a mortal sin - as even the district's warring gangs of Shiites and Sunnis agree. Barbershops have disappeared as well, because cutting hair is considered the ultimate in secular depravity. Some barbers have tried their luck in the cell-phone market. But that, too, is a risky business. Cell phones can play music and music is "haram" - immoral and forbidden according to the militias' religious code.
A "For Sale" sign bearing a cell-phone number hangs on the front gate of every fourth or fifth house in Amiriya. In the western part of Baghdad, people are quietly segregating along religious lines. The Shiites are deserting predominantly Sunni districts like Amiriya; the Sunnis turning their backs on others. Each one of them is a casualty of the violence. "The Sunnis shoot faster," says English teacher Hussam Ali, a Shiite. "That's the only difference between them."
Red Zone, Green Zone
In May 2006, the central morgue in Baghdad registered 1,398 deaths. In 2002, the year before the war, the monthly average was 300. The number of unexplained fatalities has multiplied sevenfold. The statistics do not even include victims of suicide bombings; no autopsies are performed on them.
The inconspicuous yellow building behind Medical City in Bab al-Muadham, another of Saddam's architectural showpieces from the 1980s, has been expanded several times since 2003. Two new refrigeration units were installed, and the service area for relatives enlarged. The electrical generators chug around the clock.
[photo AFP An Iraqi sits amidst the rubble at the site where insurgents slaughtered at least 57 people in a bomb and missile attack in August in a busy Baghdad neighborhood.]
Iraqi victims of Baghdad's carnage end up in Medical City, ferried there by residents, ambulances or the militias themselves. Most American casualties are flown to the 86th Combat Support Hospital in the Green Zone - on the site of the former Republican Palace. The sound of helicopters is usually a bad omen. Yet more bloodshed - the victims, the dead and wounded, are on their way.
The Green Zone is in Baghdad's city center, lodged between the two spheres of influence emerging to the east and west. No other place in Baghdad is as silent, as eerie, as surreal as the four-square-mile enclave.
In the morning, before the summer heat engulfs the city, diplomats at the U.S. embassy hook up their iPods and head out for a jog. At lunchtime, employees of American companies grab a hamburger and a soft drink on the fast-food strip behind the embassy.
Next door, a supermarket sells T-shirts, shaving cream, sun screen lotion and even Iraq memorabilia: red, Coca-Cola-style baseball caps with "Enjoy Baghdad" logos, decals sporting the embassy crest, key chains with the warning displayed on the Iraqi army's vehicles: "Keep back 100 meters or be shot."
In the evening Americans gather at the cafeteria of a U.S. military supplier. Proper dress and stringent hygiene are mandatory. Sandals are not permitted. Visitors are required to wash their hands with antibacterial solution at rows of sinks in the foyer. A Pentagon employee has her own sardonic name for the Green Zone: a freak show. She is one of the few here to have left the compound - on three forays into Baghdad's Red Zone.
The numerous checkpoints in the Green Zone are manned by private security companies that employ guards from all over the world - from places like Nepal, Sri Lanka and the Fiji Islands. One of the largest contingents hails from the Republic of Georgia. The Iraqis in the Green Zone are either members of their own government, U.S. embassy employees or people who clean the offices of foreign companies. Any others hoping to get into the Green Zone need plenty of patience.
Mai Abd al-Madschid is 62. She is wearing a black abaya; a bead of sweat trickles down her forehead. She has been standing at the main gate to the Green Zone for half an hour now, and the temperature has climbed to over 100°F in the shade. But the only cover is already taken by two Georgian security staff - under the guardhouse awning. They don't understand a single syllable of the war of words that the retired teacher is waging with the sole Iraqi guard.
Abd al-Madschid's husband has been shot to death. Her efforts to explain are falling on deaf ears. As she talks, the guard turns away and douses his head with a bottle of water. He lets two or three young people pass and then looks back at her vacantly, "Yes. And then what?"
"I've already told you! My husband was shot during a police raid," she rolls out her story again. "I'm here to file a petition to the compensation panel. I'm entitled to damages." She hands him a meticulously prepared folder. "Never heard of this panel," the soldier says.
[photo AFP, Iraqis mourn over the coffin of Sheikh Bakr Hussein al-Samarraei during his funeral in the northern city of Samarra in August. Samarraei was killed in Baghdad by unknown gunmen.]
Teresa doesn't have to wait. As head receptionist at the Rashid Hotel, she has all the papers she needs. She doesn't want her last name in print; working at the Rashid has become a health hazard. High-ranking government officials and the staff of the special tribunal trying Saddam Hussein have taken rooms in the hotel. Before the war, foreign delegations and journalists stayed there. Teresa has a good memory. She recognizes her old guests at a glance.
After the war, she was subjected to a rigorous security screening. The Rashid was formerly controlled by Saddam's intelligence services; and employees like Teresa were suspected of being on their payroll. Most of them were cleared, and just about everyone rehired - albeit at a humiliating price. Teresa worked for 15 years at the Rashid. She was proud to be the face of her country's finest hotel. Now she has to wear an ID issued by an American security company. It says: "Ground-floor access only."
One of her colleagues died in February of 2005. On the way back from the funeral, Ghasi Ali Ismail, the hotel's longstanding director, was shot to death. His deputy, who had started out as a bookkeeper over 25 years before and worked his way up through the ranks, should have taken over at the helm. Unfortunately for him, he was a Sunni; the new government wanted a Shiite.
As a Chaldean, Teresa belongs to Iraq's Christian minority. She is keenly aware of the tensions mounting at the hotel. Her church has lost many of its members; Christians no longer have any say. Those who sat out the sanctions have even more reason to leave now. "I'm 52 and not expecting to find a husband anymore," Teresa laughs.
She keeps a parrot on her balcony overlooking the Tigris; it should live to a ripe old age. And her church needs someone to help at the orphanage; the children of Baghdad deserve a brighter future. "I've already lived through three wars in this city, so I'm staying put," she says.
22/09/06, Patrick Cockburn & Jerome Taylor, New terror that stalks Iraq's republic of fear, (Back).
Arbil: The republic of fear is born again. The state of terror now gripping Iraq is as bad as it was under Saddam Hussein. Torture in the country may even be worse than it was during his rule, the United Nation's special investigator on torture said yesterday.
"The situation as far as torture is concerned now in Iraq is totally out of hand," said Manfred Nowak. "The situation is so bad many people say it is worse than it had been in the times of Saddam Hussein."
The report, from an even-handed senior UN official, is in sharp contrast with the hopes of George Bush and Tony Blair, when in 2003 they promised to bring democracy and respect for human rights to the people of Iraq. The brutal tortures committed in the prisons of the regime overthrown in 2003 are being emulated and surpassed in the detention centres of the present US- and British-backed Iraqi government. "Detainees' bodies show signs of beating using electric cables, wounds in different parts of their bodies including in the head and genitals, broken bones of legs and hands, electric and cigarette burns," the human rights office of the UN Assistance Mission in Iraq says in a new report.
The horrors of the torture chamber that led to Saddam Hussein's Iraq being labelled "The Republic of Fear", after the book of that title by Kanan Makiya, have again become commonplace. The bodies in Baghdad's morgue " often bear signs of severe torture including acid-induced injuries and burns caused by chemical substances, missing skin, broken bones (back, hands and legs), missing eyes and wounds caused by power drills or nails", the UN report said. Those not killed by these abuses are shot in the head.
Human rights groups say torture is practised in prisons run by the US as well as those run by theInterior and Defence ministries and the numerous Sunni and Shia militias.
The pervasive use of torture is only one aspect of the utter breakdown of government across Iraq outside the three Kurdish provinces in the north. In July and August alone, 6,599 civilians were killed, the UN says.
One US Army major was quoted as saying that Baghdad is now a Hobbesian world where everybody is at war with everybody else and the only protection is self-protection.
Iraq is in a state of primal anarchy. Paradoxically, the final collapse of security this summer is masked from the outside world because the country is too dangerous for journalists to report what is happening. Some 134 journalists, mostly Iraqi, have been killed since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.
The continuing rise in the number of civilians killed violently in Iraq underlines the failure of the new Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki installed in May after intense US and British pressure. The new government shows no signs of being more effective than the old. "It is just a government of the Green Zone," said an Iraqi official, referring to the fortified zone in central Baghdad housing the Iraqi government as well as the US and British embassies.
In an attempt to regain control of the capital and reduce sectarian violence, government and US troops launched "Operation Together Forward" in mid-July, but it seems to have had only marginal impact for a couple of weeks. The number of civilians killed in July was 3,590 and fell to 3,009 in August but was on the rise again at the end of the month.
The bi-monthly UN report on Iraq is almost the only neutral and objective survey of conditions in the country. The real number of civilians killed in Iraq is probably much higher because, outside Baghdad, deaths are not recorded. The Health Ministry claims, for instance, that in July nobody died violently in al-Anbar province in western Iraq, traditionally the most violent region, but this probably means the violence was so intense that casualty figures could not be collected from the hospitals.
Nobody in Iraq is safe. Buses and cars are stopped at checkpoints and Sunni or Shia are killed after a glance at their identity cards. Many people now carry two sets of identity papers, one Shia and one Sunni. Car number plates showing that it was registered in a Sunni province may be enough to get the driver shot in a Shia neighbourhood. Sectarian civil war is pervasive in Baghdad and central Iraq. Religious processions are frequently attacked. On 19 and 20 August, a Shia religious pilgrimage came under sustained attack that left 20 dead and 300 wounded.
The Iraqi state and much of society have been criminalised. Gangs of gunmen are often described on state television as "wearing police uniforms" . One senior Iraqi minister laughed as he told The Independent: " Of course they wear police uniforms. They are real policemen."
On 31 July, for instance, armed men in police uniforms driving 15 police vehicles kidnapped 26 people in an area of Baghdad known as Arasat that used to be home to several of the capital's better restaurants. Gunmen dressed in police uniforms had also kidnapped the head of Iraq's Olympic Committee, Ammar Jabbar al-Saadi, and 12 others, in the centre of Baghdad. Ransom demands were made. The US military suspected that Baghdad police's serious crime squad may have been responsible and stormed its headquarters to search vainly for the kidnap victims in its basement.
It has long been a matter of amusement and disgust in Iraq that government ministers travel abroad to give press conferences claiming that the insurgency is on its last legs. One former minister said: "I know of ministers who have never been to their ministries but get their officials to bring documents to the Green Zone where they sign them."
Beyond the Green Zone, Iraq has descended into murderous anarchy. For several days this month, the main road between Baghdad and Basra was closed because two families were fighting over ownership of an oilfield.
Government ministries are either Shia or Sunni. In Baghdad this month, a television crew filming the morgue had to cower behind a wall because the Shia guards were fighting a gun battle with the Sunni guards of the Electricity Ministry near by.
Then... and now
1998 "The Commission on Human Rights noted...massive and extremely grave violations of human rights and of international humanitarian law by the Government of Iraq... hundreds of executions, some of which may have been extrajudicial executions... Torture and ill-treatment continued to be widespread."
2006 "The situation as far as torture is concerned is now completely out of hand... many people say that it is worse than in the times of Saddam Hussein. You find bodies with very heavy and serious torture marks. "
1998 In July a group of six people, including one woman, were sentenced to death by hanging on charges of organised prostitution, involvement in the white slave trade and smuggling alcohol to Saudi Arabia.
2006 On 7 September, the Iraqi authorities announced the execution by hanging at Abu Ghraib prison of 27 prisoners, including one woman, convicted of terror and criminal charges. It is the first mass execution since Saddam Hussein's rule.
22/09/06, Rupert Cornwell: Nothing the Americans do stops the slide into despair, (Back).
They have organised elections, and pushed through a new democratically-ratified constitution that has given birth to a national government with a true mandate. They have sent more of their own troops, and trained the locals. They have sacrificed some 2,700 of their servicemen and over $300bn (£1.6bn) of their taxpayers' money. But nothing the Americans can do has stopped post-Saddam Iraq's long slide into chaos and despair.
President Bush and his top aides still insist civil war has not broken out. That, however, is a matter of semantics after the latest UN report that almost 6,600 people died in sectarian violence in the last two months for which statistics are available - an "unprecedented" 3,590 in July, followed by 3009 in August.
That is 108 killings every day. As Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary General, put it this week during the final General Assembly of his tenure: "If current patterns of alienation and violence persist much longer, there is a grave danger that the Iraqi state will break down, possibly in the midst of full-scale civil war."
That was not what the Bush administration intended when Nuri al-Maliki became prime minister four months ago. The security situation has only worsened since and basic services have become ever more intermittent. Even the most upbeat US commanders admit, if Baghdad cannot be saved, Iraq is lost.
That fate, according to a leaked recent report by the Marines' top intelligence officer in Iraq, has befallen Anbar province, home of the "Sunni Triangle" - which accounts for nearly a third of the country.
The report, which has not been seriously disputed by the Pentagon, concludes that nothing US forces at their present levels can do in Anbar will bring it under control. The writ of the central government does not run there. In Baghdad too, nothing seems to work. Earlier this summer Mr Malaki announced a massive security blitz in the capital by US and Iraqi troops.
The upshot has been only greater violence in a city where private militias rule entire neighbourhoods. Now there is talk of a fortified cordon around the city - but scant prospect that this initiative will succeed.
Not surprisingly, muttering here against Mr Maliki grows more audible by the day. President Bush was being "driven crazy" by Mr Maliki's indecisiveness, The New York Times reported on Wednesday, quoting a former senior US official. The pictures of a smiling Mr Maliki on his recent visit to Iran, apparently getting on famously with Washington's current nemesis, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, cannot have improved President Bush's humour.
The killings spare no one. Pentagon figures show that attacks between May and August this year were running at 792 a week, up 24 per cent from the previous quarter. Sectarian violence is increasing, but so too are attacks on US troops.
The hope was to reduce US forces in Iraq in this US election year. Instead they have been increased, from 127,000 in January to 144,000 now. Each day, two or three more American soldiers die. Since the March 2003 invasion over 2,690 have been lost.
Three decades ago, a decorated young veteran who would become the Democratic presidential candidate in 2004 famously asked: "How do you ask a man to become the last man to die for a mistake?" The words of John Kerry to a Congressional Committee that was probing the Vietnam war now apply to Iraq - to American soldiers and Iraqi civilians alike.
21/09/06, Afif Sarhan, IRAQ: Analysts say violence will continue to increase, (Back).
Coalition forces say they will not leave Iraq until local forces are fully trained to manage on their own.
BAGHDAD, 21 Sep 2006 (IRIN) - Violence and the use of torture has increased exponentially in Iraq since the United States-led occupation of the country began in 2003, according to local analysts.
“Violence in Iraq has destroyed the integrity and structure of the country. Development and reconstruction has been delayed and, in addition, the human rights situation, which was the reason for the US invasion in Iraq, has worsened when compared to [former President] Saddam Hussein’s regime,” said Barak Ibrahim, a political analyst and professor at Mustansiryiah University.
Ibrahim and other specialists at the university say that violence in Iraq will continue despite different reconciliation plans being proposed because insurgency and militia actions are a response to the US-led occupation.
“If we go deep into the cause that prompted such violence we will find in the end that the presence, especially, of US-troops in the country has generated revolt and loss of patience by fighters and only when they [the occupation forces] leave the country can we start to speak about improvement in security issues,” Ibrahim said.
The analysts made their remarks following the release on Wednesday of the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) report which stated that human rights violations were rapidly escalating in Iraq and that the death toll was worryingly high.
“Human rights violations, particularly against the right to life and personal integrity, continued to occur at an alarming daily rate in Iraq,” said the UNAMI report.
The US continues to assert that the removal of Saddam Hussein’s government was necessary as it posed a threat. “Saddam's regime posed a risk that the world could not afford to take. The world is safer because Saddam Hussein is no longer in power,” said US president George Bush in a speech on 11 September.
Bodies were severely tortured
According to the report, bodies sent to the capital’s morgue habitually bore signs of severe torture, including acid-induced injuries, burns caused by chemical substances, missing skin, broken bones, backs, hands and legs, missing eyes and teeth and wounds caused by power drills or nails.
The Iraqi authorities confirmed that most of the bodies that were found in the past six months bore signs of serious torture.
“Unfortunately, the information released by UNAMI in its report is true and reflects the reality of Iraq today. Most of the bodies found were tortured and were sometimes even impossible to recognise,” said Dr Fa'aq Amin, director of the Institute for Forensic Medicine at the Ministry of Health.
UNAMI’s report said that 3,590 civilians were killed in July and 3,009 in August. The Iraqi Health Ministry said that of those murdered in July, some 1,855 were killed because of sectarian or political violence, and another 1,583 died as a result of bombings and shootings.
Baghdad’s morgue reported nearly 1,800 killings in July and 2,000 in August in the capital alone.
“It is possible that the numbers could be higher than those reported at our morgue because not all killings in the country are registered with us,” Amin added.
More than 20,600 Iraqi civilians have died in attacks since January according to UNAMI. Between 43,269 and 48,046 civilians were killed since the US-led occupation began in March 2003, according to the NGO Iraq Body Count.
“Human rights violation is not only a crime against humanity but also the deprivation of a life which Iraqis have dreamt of during Saddam Hussein’s regime but which they cannot have because of insurgency and terrorism,” said Khuman Ahmed, human rights adviser at the Ministry of Human Rights.
Honour killings
The UNAMI report also warned of the increasing number of honour crimes against women in the country.
“In their fight against generalised violence, central, regional and local authorities should provide greater protection to women for crimes committed within the family, including all types of violence against women and girls on the grounds of honour,” the report said.
“The killing of a woman in Iraq will not command the same media attention as that of a man. Honour killing is a terror that women in Iraq have been suffering from and those responsible should pay drastically for that,” said Nuha Salim, spokesperson for the Baghdad-based NGO Women Freedom Organisation (WFO).
The release of UNAMI’s report came a day before the handing over of security control by British and Italian troops to Iraqi forces in the province of Dhi Qar in southern Iraq on Thursday.
It was the second of 18 provinces to have foreign troops withdrawn, the first one being neighbouring Muthanna in July 2006. Dhi Qar has experienced a minimal number of attacks and has been under the protection of coalition forces since 2003.
However, analysts are sceptical that the withdrawal of foreign troops from the province would bring long-term stability.
“The Dhi Qar handover was a good beginning but will not make any difference to insurgents and militias. The base still remains and the US military have no idea when they are going to leave our country. Every day the date for withdrawal is postponed causing more death and violence as a result of generalised revolts,” Professor Ibrahim said.
The US administration says that it will not pull out its forces until Iraqi forces are sufficiently trained to take over. “We're training Iraqi troops so they can defend their nation,” said Bush in his 11 September speech. “We're helping Iraq's unity government grow in strength and serve its people. We will not leave until this work is done.
“Whatever mistakes have been made in Iraq, the worst mistake would be to think that if we pulled out, the terrorists would leave us alone. They will not leave us alone. They will follow us. The safety of America depends on the outcome of the battle in the streets of Baghdad.”
Insurgents say they will not change their ways until all coalition troops have left the country.
“Only when we see the Americans get out of Iraq will we put our weapons in the rubbish heap,” said Abu Khalifa, a spokesperson for the militia Muhammad Army.
25/09/06, Patrick Cockburn, A journey into the 'Taliban republic', (Back).
A journey into the 'Taliban republic' where the militias rule unchallenged, Diyala, north east Iraq.
Civil war is raging through the Iraqi countryside. Sunni insurgents have largely taken control of the province of Diyala, where local leaders believe the insurgents are close to establishing a "Taliban republic".
Officials in the strategically important province - composed of a mixture of Sunnis and Shias with a Kurdish minority - have no doubt about what is happening. Lt-Col Ahmed Ahmed Nuri Hassan, a weary-looking commander of the federal police, says: "Now there is an ethnic civil war and it is getting worse every day."
At the moment, the Sunni seem to be winning.
As the violence has escalated over the past three years, it has become too dangerous for journalists to find out what is happening in the provinces outside the capital. The UN said last week that 5,106 civilians were killed in Baghdad in July and August and 1,493 in the provinces outside it.
Insurgents have cut the roads out of the capital to the west and the north. As I travelled through the provinces of this vast, war-torn country, despite keeping to the relatively calm tongue of Kurdish territory that extends through the countryside almost to Baghdad, I was keenly aware that it is not a place to make a mistake in map reading.
We drove for a couple of hours beside the Diyala river which rises in Iran's Zagros mountains and looks like a smaller version of the Nile, a streak of vivid green vegetation running through dun-coloured semi-desert. Then we turned abruptly east before the road entered the strongly insurgent district of As-Sadiyah.
What could have happened if we had continued down the main road was evident at Lt-Col Hassan's headquarters. In one corner of the courtyard was the wreckage of a blue-and-white police vehicle, ripped apart by a bomb. "Five policemen were killed in it when it was blown up at an intersection in As-Sadiyah two months ago," a policeman told us. "Only their commander survived but both his legs were amputated."
In Diyala, it is possible to see the anguished break-up of Iraq at ground level. Going by the accounts of police and government officials in the province, the death toll outside Baghdad may be far higher than previously reported. Ibrahim Hassan Bajalan, the head of Diyala's provincial council - who had survived an attempt to assassinate him in Baquba with a mortar attack the previous day - says he believed that "on average, 100 people are being killed in Diyala every week."
The latest were three civilians shot dead yesterday by unidentified assailants. Behind them, as the killers sped away in their car through the streets of Baquba, the families of the dead were left to grieve, falling to their knees and throwing their arms open to the sky in despair.
Many of those who die disappear for ever, thrown into the Diyala river or buried in date palm groves and fruit orchards. The reason for their killings can be spurious, and people have become careful to avoid incurring the wrath of local Sunni insurgents who control much of the province according to strict Islamic laws. "They have even banned the sale of cigarettes in the provincial capital, Baquba, and kill anybody selling cigarettes," Mr Bajalan said. "I have to bring in cigarettes from other places to give them to council members who are smokers."
In a house in Khanaqin, a Kurdish enclave in the north-east of the province, Nazar Ali Mirza, a sorrowful-looking middle-aged woman, described how she had fled too late from Muqdadiyah, the Sunni-dominated town of 200,000 people where she was born. She was caught by surprise when death squads began to target Kurds and Shias in her neighbourhood. Her eldest son, Khalil Mohammed Ahmed, a taxi driver, went out to collect a washing machine in March and never came back. She is beginning to assume he is dead but no body was discovered.
"Kurds and Shias were being driven out of our district," she said. "Men in black masks came to me and said they would kill my sons, even if they flew up into the sky, unless I moved away." One of her other sons was a policeman permanently disabled in a bomb explosion.
Mrs Mirza and her family are among 300,000 Iraqis forced to flee their homes since the beginning of the year. Everywhere, minorities frightened for their lives are on the move. "Nobody waits any longer to find out if a threat is real," says Mamosta Mohsin, the leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan in Khanaqin which, in effect, runs the town. "Even if the threat is organised by two children, people will run." Most often, the threat is real. Lt-Col Hassan has a collection of files in which the names of the latest refugees are registered. Most of them are Kurds coming from Baghdad, Ramadi, Baquba and the rest of the country.
He hands over a piece of paper showing how the number of refugee families arriving in this small town had risen from 29 in January to 318 in June. It was still 239 in August.
Lt-Col Hassan says that neither Sunni nor Shia are particularly well organised: "It is not like Lebanon, because most of the killing is done by local or tribal militias." The problem is not that the insurgents are strong but that the government forces are so weak. A division of 7,000 government soldiers is in Diyala, he said, "but they are all Shias and only arrest Sunnis."
Mr Bajalan confirms that the army is weak in Diyala, saying most of it is tied down at checkpoints. He reckons there is one soldier for every 50 square kilometres of the province. "The soldiers are badly armed," he says.
"They just have Kalashnikovs while the terrorists have rocket launchers and heavy machine guns. When they attack, they always kill 10 or 15 army or police."
The Americans do have a base near Baquba, and act in a supportive role when they are asked to. "That isn't much use against guerrillas," says Mr Bajalan. "They've all gone home by the time the Americans arrive."
Baghdad announced signal successes around Baquba last week, including the capture of leaders of two Sunni insurgent groups. But nobody in Diyala had heard about it, and, without exception, they expected the civil war to grow in intensity.
Patrick Cockburn's The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq will be published by Verso on 9 October
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