Newsnight has obtained the first pictures of Kurdish soldiers being trained by Israelis in Northern Iraq, as well as an interview with one of the former commandos who carried out the work.
When the former Israeli special forces soldiers were sent to Iraq in 2004 they were told they would be disowned if they were discovered.
Their role there was to train two groups of Kurdish troops. One would act as a security force for the new Hawler International Airport (near Erbil) and the other, of more than 100 peshmerga or Kurdish fighters, would be trained for "special assignments", according to one of Newsnight's interviewees.
Contractors
An Israeli security consulting form called Interop acted as the main contractor for the Hawler airport project and set up two subsidiaries (Kudo and Colosium) to carry out work in Iraq.
Kudo and Colosium described themseleves as Swiss-registered companies.
It's a bit tense because you know where you are and you know who you are, and
there's always a chance that you'll get revealed
An Israeli trainer
One of the founders of Interop, and its Chairman until 2003, was Danny Yatom, a former Head of Mossad - the Israeli foreign intelligence service and now an MP.
He told Newsnight today: "I was not aware of what was done in 2004 and 2005 because I cut all contacts with the company when I entered the Israeli parliament in 2003."
During 2004-5, Interop and Kudo were run by Shlomi Michaels, a former head of Israel's counter-terrorist unit. Contacted by Newsnight, Mr Michaels declined to comment.
Special assignments
Newsnight was told by the Israeli interviewee involved in the training that senior Kurdish officials were aware of their nationality, but not the troops being trained.
The sensitivities for the Kurdish authorities are serious, since their political enemies have long accused them of being in cahoots with Israel.
The Kurdish authorities have previously denied allowing any Israelis into northern Iraq.
The Israeli trainer says: "You know, day by day it's a bit tense because you know where you are and you know who you are. And there's always a chance that you'll get revealed.
"My part of the contract was to train the Kurdish security people for a big airport project and for training, as well as the Peshmerga, and the actual soldiers, the army.
"We were training them in all kinds of anti-terror lessons, anti-terror, security airport, training them with long rifles, pistols; telling them, teaching them tactics like shooting behind doors, behind barricades, shooting from the left, shooting from the right, shooting from windows, how to shoot first, how to identify a terrorist in a crowd.
"That's clearly special assignments. That's only training that special units get for special assignments.
"We crossed the border from Turkey and one of the intelligence officers passed us by, through the border, without stamping our passports.
"So you reckon that if two guys from the intelligence service knew we were Israelis and they saw our passports as well, the leadership knew as well - I mean their bosses, that's natural."
"The second Israel"
Khaled Salih, a spokesman for the Kurdistan Regional Government, says: "These are not new allegations for us. Back in the sixties and seventies we were called 'the second Israel' in the region and we were supposed to be eliminated by Islamist nationalist and now Islamist groups.
"They look for internal enemies and we are the easiest to target. These kind of speculations have been around in the region for more than 30 years."
The Kurdistan region sits at a strategic crossroads. To the east is Iran, to the north-west Turkey. Both countries have significant Kurd minorities and are worried about a Kurdish state emerging in northern Iraq.
The authorities there have accepted that for now and that they must remain part of a federal Iraq.
As they develop their region, the Kurds have opened an international airport at Irbil (Hawler in Kurdish).
It now boasts dozens of international flights each week and it is at Hawler International that the Israelis began their work.
Strategic options
With Iran becoming Israel's principal enemy, there have been reports of Israelis using Kurdish areas of Iraq to increase its strategic options.
One constraint facing the Israelis, should they ever want to hit Iran, is distance. Most Israeli jets are short range and they have few in-flight tankers. Some studies have suggested that Israel could make refuelling stops at a modern airfield in Kurdistan.
If the Israelis ever planned to use Hawler airport as an emergency refuelling stop, it has now been compromised by Israeli press reports.
After finishing their training, Kurds sang their national anthem while marching behind one of the Israelis.
Israeli Government spokesman, Mark Regev, told Newsnight that the Investigations Division of the Israeli Ministry of Defence had passed the details of this case to the Israeli police to see if there had been any violation of export laws.
He added: "We have not authorised anyone to do any defence work in Iraq... If information is brought and there's clear evidence that people broke our law, of course I expect them to be prosecuted."
MARK URBAN'S REPORT WAS SHOWN ON NEWSNIGHT ON TUESDAY, 19 SEPTEMBER, 2006
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/5363116.stm
Published: 2006/09/20 10:24:19 GMT
Newsnight has obtained the first pictures of Kurdish soldiers being trained by Israelis in Northern Iraq, as well as an interview with one of the former commandos who carried out the work.
When the former Israeli special forces soldiers were sent to Iraq in 2004 they were told they would be disowned if they were discovered.
Their role there was to train two groups of Kurdish troops. One would act as a security force for the new Hawler International Airport (near Erbil) and the other, of more than 100 peshmerga or Kurdish fighters, would be trained for "special assignments", according to one of Newsnight's interviewees.
Contractors
An Israeli security consulting form called Interop acted as the main contractor for the Hawler airport project and set up two subsidiaries (Kudo and Colosium) to carry out work in Iraq.
Kudo and Colosium described themseleves as Swiss-registered companies.
It's a bit tense because you know where you are and you know who you are, and
there's always a chance that you'll get revealed
An Israeli trainer
One of the founders of Interop, and its Chairman until 2003, was Danny Yatom, a former Head of Mossad - the Israeli foreign intelligence service and now an MP.
He told Newsnight today: "I was not aware of what was done in 2004 and 2005 because I cut all contacts with the company when I entered the Israeli parliament in 2003."
During 2004-5, Interop and Kudo were run by Shlomi Michaels, a former head of Israel's counter-terrorist unit. Contacted by Newsnight, Mr Michaels declined to comment.
Special assignments
Newsnight was told by the Israeli interviewee involved in the training that senior Kurdish officials were aware of their nationality, but not the troops being trained.
The sensitivities for the Kurdish authorities are serious, since their political enemies have long accused them of being in cahoots with Israel.
The Kurdish authorities have previously denied allowing any Israelis into northern Iraq.
The Israeli trainer says: "You know, day by day it's a bit tense because you know where you are and you know who you are. And there's always a chance that you'll get revealed.
"My part of the contract was to train the Kurdish security people for a big airport project and for training, as well as the Peshmerga, and the actual soldiers, the army.
"We were training them in all kinds of anti-terror lessons, anti-terror, security airport, training them with long rifles, pistols; telling them, teaching them tactics like shooting behind doors, behind barricades, shooting from the left, shooting from the right, shooting from windows, how to shoot first, how to identify a terrorist in a crowd.
"That's clearly special assignments. That's only training that special units get for special assignments.
"We crossed the border from Turkey and one of the intelligence officers passed us by, through the border, without stamping our passports.
"So you reckon that if two guys from the intelligence service knew we were Israelis and they saw our passports as well, the leadership knew as well - I mean their bosses, that's natural."
"The second Israel"
Khaled Salih, a spokesman for the Kurdistan Regional Government, says: "These are not new allegations for us. Back in the sixties and seventies we were called 'the second Israel' in the region and we were supposed to be eliminated by Islamist nationalist and now Islamist groups.
"They look for internal enemies and we are the easiest to target. These kind of speculations have been around in the region for more than 30 years."
The Kurdistan region sits at a strategic crossroads. To the east is Iran, to the north-west Turkey. Both countries have significant Kurd minorities and are worried about a Kurdish state emerging in northern Iraq.
The authorities there have accepted that for now and that they must remain part of a federal Iraq.
As they develop their region, the Kurds have opened an international airport at Irbil (Hawler in Kurdish).
It now boasts dozens of international flights each week and it is at Hawler International that the Israelis began their work.
Strategic options
With Iran becoming Israel's principal enemy, there have been reports of Israelis using Kurdish areas of Iraq to increase its strategic options.
One constraint facing the Israelis, should they ever want to hit Iran, is distance. Most Israeli jets are short range and they have few in-flight tankers. Some studies have suggested that Israel could make refuelling stops at a modern airfield in Kurdistan.
If the Israelis ever planned to use Hawler airport as an emergency refuelling stop, it has now been compromised by Israeli press reports.
After finishing their training, Kurds sang their national anthem while marching behind one of the Israelis.
Israeli Government spokesman, Mark Regev, told Newsnight that the Investigations Division of the Israeli Ministry of Defence had passed the details of this case to the Israeli police to see if there had been any violation of export laws.
He added: "We have not authorised anyone to do any defence work in Iraq... If information is brought and there's clear evidence that people broke our law, of course I expect them to be prosecuted."
MARK URBAN'S REPORT WAS SHOWN ON NEWSNIGHT ON TUESDAY, 19 SEPTEMBER, 2006
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/5363116.stm
Published: 2006/09/20 10:24:19 GMT
We cannot afford to maintain these
ancient prejudices against Islam
The Pope's remarks were dangerous, and will convince many more Muslims that the west is incurably Islamophobic
Karen Armstrong
Monday September 18, 2006The Guardian
In the 12th century, Peter the Venerable, Abbot of Cluny, initiated a dialogue with the Islamic world. "I approach you not with arms, but with words," he wrote to the Muslims whom he imagined reading his book, "not with force, but with reason, not with hatred, but with love." Yet his treatise was entitled Summary of the Whole Heresy of the Diabolical Sect of the Saracens and segued repeatedly into spluttering intransigence. Words failed Peter when he contemplated the "bestial cruelty" of Islam, which, he claimed, had established itself by the sword. Was Muhammad a true prophet? "I shall be worse than a donkey if I agree," he expostulated, "worse than cattle if I assent!"
Peter was writing at the time of the Crusades. Even when Christians were trying to be fair, their entrenched loathing of Islam made it impossible for them to approach it objectively. For Peter, Islam was so self-evidently evil that it did not seem to occur to him that the Muslims he approached with such "love" might be offended by his remarks. This medieval cast of mind is still alive and well.
Last week, Pope Benedict XVI quoted, without qualification and with apparent approval, the words of the 14th-century Byzantine emperor Manuel II: "Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." The Vatican seemed bemused by the Muslim outrage occasioned by the Pope's words, claiming that the Holy Father had simply intended "to cultivate an attitude of respect and dialogue toward the other religions and cultures, and obviously also towards Islam".
But the Pope's good intentions seem far from obvious. Hatred of Islam is so ubiquitous and so deeply rooted in western culture that it brings together people who are usually at daggers drawn. Neither the Danish cartoonists, who published the offensive caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad last February, nor the Christian fundamentalists who have called him a paedophile and a terrorist, would ordinarily make common cause with the Pope; yet on the subject of Islam they are in full agreement.
Our Islamophobia dates back to the time of the Crusades, and is entwined with our chronic anti-semitism. Some of the first Crusaders began their journey to the Holy Land by massacring the Jewish communities along the Rhine valley; the Crusaders ended their campaign in 1099 by slaughtering some 30,000 Muslims and Jews in Jerusalem. It is always difficult to forgive people we know we have wronged. Thenceforth Jews and Muslims became the shadow-self of Christendom, the mirror image of everything that we hoped we were not - or feared that we were.
The fearful fantasies created by Europeans at this time endured for centuries and reveal a buried anxiety about Christian identity and behaviour. When the popes called for a Crusade to the Holy Land, Christians often persecuted the local Jewish communities: why march 3,000 miles to Palestine to liberate the tomb of Christ, and leave unscathed the people who had - or so the Crusaders mistakenly assumed - actually killed Jesus. Jews were believed to kill little children and mix their blood with the leavened bread of Passover: this "blood libel" regularly inspired pogroms in Europe, and the image of the Jew as the child slayer laid bare an almost Oedipal terror of the parent faith.
Jesus had told his followers to love their enemies, not to exterminate them. It was when the Christians of Europe were fighting brutal holy wars against Muslims in the Middle East that Islam first became known in the west as the religion of the sword. At this time, when the popes were trying to impose celibacy on the reluctant clergy, Muhammad was portrayed by the scholar monks of Europe as a lecher, and Islam condemned - with ill-concealed envy - as a faith that encouraged Muslims to indulge their basest sexual instincts. At a time when European social order was deeply hierarchical, despite the egalitarian message of the gospel, Islam was condemned for giving too much respect to women and other menials.
In a state of unhealthy denial, Christians were projecting subterranean disquiet about their activities on to the victims of the Crusades, creating fantastic enemies in their own image and likeness. This habit has persisted. The Muslims who have objected so vociferously to the Pope's denigration of Islam have accused him of "hypocrisy", pointing out that the Catholic church is ill-placed to condemn violent jihad when it has itself been guilty of unholy violence in crusades, persecutions and inquisitions and, under Pope Pius XII, tacitly condoned the Nazi Holocaust.
Pope Benedict delivered his controversial speech in Germany the day after the fifth anniversary of September 11. It is difficult to believe that his reference to an inherently violent strain in Islam was entirely accidental. He has, most unfortunately, withdrawn from the interfaith initiatives inaugurated by his predecessor, John Paul II, at a time when they are more desperately needed than ever. Coming on the heels of the Danish cartoon crisis, his remarks were extremely dangerous. They will convince more Muslims that the west is incurably Islamophobic and engaged in a new crusade.
We simply cannot afford this type of bigotry. The trouble is that too many people in the western world unconsciously share this prejudice, convinced that Islam and the Qur'an are addicted to violence. The 9/11 terrorists, who in fact violated essential Islamic principles, have confirmed this deep-rooted western perception and are seen as typical Muslims instead of the deviants they really were.
With disturbing regularity, this medieval conviction surfaces every time there is trouble in the Middle East. Yet until the 20th century, Islam was a far more tolerant and peaceful faith than Christianity. The Qur'an strictly forbids any coercion in religion and regards all rightly guided religion as coming from God; and despite the western belief to the contrary, Muslims did not impose their faith by the sword.
The early conquests in Persia and Byzantium after the Prophet's death were inspired by political rather than religious aspirations. Until the middle of the eighth century, Jews and Christians in the Muslim empire were actively discouraged from conversion to Islam, as, according to Qur'anic teaching, they had received authentic revelations of their own. The extremism and intolerance that have surfaced in the Muslim world in our own day are a response to intractable political problems - oil, Palestine, the occupation of Muslim lands, the prevelance of authoritarian regimes in the Middle East, and the west's perceived "double standards" - and not to an ingrained religious imperative.
But the old myth of Islam as a chronically violent faith persists, and surfaces at the most inappropriate moments. As one of the received ideas of the west, it seems well-nigh impossible to eradicate. Indeed, we may even be strengthening it by falling back into our old habits of projection. As we see the violence - in Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon - for which we bear a measure of responsibility, there is a temptation, perhaps, to blame it all on "Islam". But if we are feeding our prejudice in this way, we do so at our peril.
· Karen Armstrong is the author of Islam: A Short History
Biography: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Armstrong
Kulshan has been rearrested!
Immediate action without delay is necessary to prevent the death squads from killing our colleague.
Demand for the Immediate Release of Dr Fadhil Al Bedrani
Friday, 15 September 2006, Brussels
The BRussells Tribunal today demands that the US government immediately release Dr Fadhil Al Bedrani and all members of his family who were taken into US military custody 12 September 2006.
Dr Fadhil Al Bedrani is a professor of journalism and a prominent patriotic writer known for his anti-occupation stand and whose reports appear on Al-Jazeera as well as Reuters and the BBC. When talking about the difficulty of getting news out of Iraq and into mainstream media, he said: “we report but they censor.”
Little information is yet available, but some reports say that as many as 65 members of Dr Bedrani’s family were arrested with him. It is also reported that US forces killed Dr Bedrani’s brother, Fayez Al Bedrani, a student at the Islamic Sciences College. Another brother, Abdul Qadir Mohamad Al Bedrani, also a reporter for Reuters, was shot by the US and Iraqi troops in Fallujah in August 2005.
The BRussells Tribunal condemns the detention of Dr Fadhil Al Bedrani and his family and demands assurances of his wellbeing and that of his relatives, as well as his immediate release and the release of all family members, and all political prisoners in Iraq.
We call on news agencies, human rights organisations, national and international press associations and freedom of expression advocacy groups to stand in solidarity with Dr Bedrani and take immediate action to help secure the release of both him and his family.
In a week in which three journalists in Iraq have been assassinated and others arrested, and in the context of over 140 Iraqi media workers killed since 2003, Dr Bedrani’s arrest illustrates a deepening campaign of the US occupation against freedom of speech in Iraq. It further illustrates that the US plan for Iraq has failed and that all the US can now propose is repression.
Occupation should end.
The BRussells Tribunal Committee
Please circulate this appeal widely. For more information contact:
www.brusselstribunal.org
http://www.brusselstribunal.org/JournalistKilled.htm
The Hysteria of Defeat:
the US Occupation arrests the journalist Fadil Badrani.
By Salah al-Mukhtar,
General Coordinator of Free Non-Governmental Organizations in Iraq.
Before the file on the arrest of Kalshan al-Bayati was closed, the American occupation in Iraq arrested the courageous journalist and writer Dr. Fadil al-Badrani when he arrived at the memorial service for his brother, the martyr Fayiz al-Badrani, that was being held in al-Fallujah, the defiant city of Resistance. Al-Badrani’s arrest is yet another indication of the confused failure of the occupation and of the fact that they have now entered the stage of making hysterical decisions as a result of the heavy and repeated defeats they are suffering on the battlefield at the hands of the heroic Iraqi patriotic Resistance. The hysteria of defeat has become, more than before, an atmosphere conducive to crushing the voices of freedom in Iraq with premeditated murder or at least with arrest, as a response to their demands that the occupation leave Iraq and that authority in the country be restored to its rightful owners. We, in the name of the free writers and journalists of Iraq demand that the US occupation guarantee the life of the journalist Fadil al-Badrani, set him free immediately, and allow him to return to the practice of his profession. We call on the Reuters News Agency, for which he works, to intervene immediately for his release and we call on the movement Journalists Without Borders to organize a campaign immediately for his release. Last but not least, we hope that all free journalists and writers will without delay today and in the days to come take up their pens and write so as to bring pressure to bear and guarantee the life and freedom of the journalist Fadil al-Badrani.
Let us all stand together against the violations of free speech that the US government is committing in Iraq as a fundamental part of its plan to conceal the crimes against humanity of which it is guilty in occupied Iraq!
Senate Intelligence report finds no Saddam-al-Qaeda link
Updated 9/9/2006 4:37 AM ET
WASHINGTON (AP) — Saddam Hussein rejected overtures from al-Qaeda and believed Islamic extremists were a threat to his regime, a reverse portrait of an Iraq allied with Osama bin Laden painted by the Bush White House, a Senate panel has found.
The administration's version was based in part on intelligence that White House officials knew was flawed, according to Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee, citing newly declassified documents released by the panel.
The report, released Friday, discloses for the first time an October 2005 CIA assessment that prior to the war Saddam's government "did not have a relationship, harbor or turn a blind eye toward" al-Qaeda operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi or his associates.
As recently as an Aug. 21 news conference, President Bush said people should "imagine a world in which you had Saddam Hussein" with the capacity to make weapons of mass destruction and "who had relations with Zarqawi."
Democrats singled out CIA Director George Tenet, saying that during a private meeting in July Tenet told the panel that the White House pressured him and that he agreed to back up the administration's case for war despite his own agents' doubts about the intelligence it was based on.
"Tenet admitted to the Intelligence Committee that the policymakers wanted him to 'say something about not being inconsistent with what the president had said,'" Intelligence Committee member Carl Levin, D-Mich., told reporters Friday.
Tenet also told the committee that complying had been "the wrong thing to do," according to Levin.
"Well, it was much more than that," Levin said. "It was a shocking abdication of a CIA director's duty not to act as a shill for any administration or its policy."
Leaders of both parties accused each other of seeking political gain on the eve of the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Republicans said the document contained little new information about prewar intelligence or postwar findings on Iraq's weapons and connection to terrorist groups.
Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., accused Democrats of trying to "use the committee ... insisting that they were deliberately duped into supporting the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime."
"That is simply not true," Roberts added, "and I believe the American people are smart enough to recognize election-year politicking when they see it."
The report speaks for itself, Democrats said.
The administration "exploited the deep sense of insecurity among Americans in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, leading a large majority of Americans to believe — contrary to the intelligence assessments at the time — that Iraq had a role in the 9/11 attacks," said Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee.
Still, Democrats were reluctant to say how the administration officials involved should be called to account.
Asked whether the wrongdoing amounted to criminal conduct, Levin and Rockefeller declined to answer. Rockefeller said later he did not believe Bush should be impeached over the matter.
According to the report, postwar findings indicate that Saddam "was distrustful of al-Qaeda and viewed Islamic extremists as a threat to his regime." It quotes an FBI report from June 2004 in which former Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz said in an interview that "Saddam only expressed negative sentiments about bin Laden."
Saddam himself is quoted in an FBI summary as acknowledging that the Iraqi government had met with bin Laden but denying that he had colluded with the al-Qaeda leader. Claiming that Iraq opposed only U.S. policies, Saddam said that "if he wanted to cooperate with the enemies of the U.S., he would have allied with North Korea or China," the report quotes the FBI document.
The Democrats said that on Oct. 7, 2002, the day Bush gave a speech speaking of that link, the CIA had sent a declassified letter to the committee saying it would be an "extreme step" for Saddam to assist Islamist terrorists in attacking the United States.
Levin and Rockefeller said Tenet in July acknowledged to the committee that subsequently issuing a statement that there was no inconsistency between the president's speech and the CIA viewpoint had been a mistake.
They also charged Bush with continuing to cite faulty intelligence in his argument for war as recently as last month.
The report said that Zarqawi, the al-Qaeda leader killed by a U.S. airstrike last June, was in Baghdad from May 2002 until late November 2002. But "postwar information indicates that Saddam Hussein attempted, unsuccessfully, to locate and capture al-Zarqawi and that the regime did not have a relationship with, harbor or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi."
In June 2004, Bush also defended Vice President Dick Cheney's assertion that Saddam had "long-established ties" with al-Qaeda. "Zarqawi is the best evidence of connection to al-Qaeda affiliates and al-Qaeda," the president said.
The report concludes that postwar findings do not support a 2002 intelligence community report that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program, possessed biological weapons or ever developed mobile facilities for producing biological warfare agents.
A second part of the report finds that false information from the Iraqi National Congress, an anti-Saddam group led by then-exile Ahmed Chalabi, was used to support key intelligence community assessments on Iraq.
Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Posted 9/8/2006 12:19 PM ET
Iraq and its enemies
By Gabriele Zamparini
On 18 July 2006 the United Nations reported:
9. The reported number of civilian casualties continued an upward trend. (…) The total figure of civilians killed in Iraq, adding the figures provided by the Ministry of Health and the MLI, reaches 2,669 civilians in May and 3,149 in June 2006. According to the Ministry of Health, from January to June 2006 there were 6,826 civilians killed and 13,256 wounded. Including the figures of the MLI in Baghdad for the period, the total of civilians killed in Iraq from January-June 2006 was 14,338.
10. On 25 June, the Ministry of Health publicly acknowledged information stating that since 2003 at least 50,000 persons have been killed violently. The Baghdad morgue reportedly received 30,204 bodies from 2003 to mid-2006. Death numbering 18,933 occurred from “military clashes” and “terrorist attacks” between 5 April 2004 and 1 June 2006. The Ministry further indicated that the number of deaths is probably underreported. (1)
This past June, when the Los Angeles Times published “War's Iraqi Death Toll Tops 50,000” [“according to statistics from the Baghdad morgue, the Iraqi Health Ministry and other agencies”] Stephen Soldz wrote:
Further, the fact that mortality estimates come from government sources raises questions as to the accuracy of attributed causes. After all, attributing deaths to “terrorist attacks” is more acceptable to the powers-that-be than is attributing tem to “American forces” or to pro-government militias and death squads. (2)
The Iraqi Health Ministry, which operates the Baghdad morgue and government hospitals, is in the hands of a religious party headed by Moqtada al-Sadr, the Shiite cleric whose militia, the Mahdi Army, is responsible of mass murdering and ethnic cleansing.
In spite of the propaganda coming from certain sectors of the Western antiwar movement and the so called “left” claiming that Muqtada al-Sadr is a hero of the Iraqi resistance and he’s fiercely anti-US and anti-occupation, the reality couldn’t be more different.
The Iraqi government will continue to work with Muqtada Sadr, the main force behind one of Iraq's largest Shiite militias, a top Iraqi official said Friday. "We have to distinguish between the political line and the militia line," said Iraqi Deputy President Adil Abd al-Mahdi. "We ... are working a lot (with Sadr), and he is supporting the government. He has ministers in the government. And we are trying to distinguish between undisciplined groups from the disciplined ones. The government of (Prime Minister) Maliki is working very well on that issue." Mahdi made his remarks Friday at the Pentagon, where he met with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. (3)
It’s unfortunate – to say the least – that the “few bad apples” myth has been voiced in the West by many leftists and intellectuals. The huge amount of evidence we now have tells us that:
1) Muqtada al-Sadr is the leader of a bloody criminal organization, the Mahdi Army, that’s been committing mass murdering and ethnic cleansing in Iraq;
2) this organization is an important part of the Iraqi puppet government; and
3) it’s been cooperating with the occupation forces in the fighting against the Iraqi resistance.
In July, the Washington Post reported:
According to witnesses and a Washington Post special correspondent, carloads of men in tracksuits, suspected by residents to be members of the powerful Shiite militia known as the Mahdi Army, pulled up outside the Malouki mosque and fired rocket-propelled grenades at the house of worship. During the firefight, a bullet pierced the shoulder of a mosque guard. Cars were gutted and burned. Residents said they did not know how many people died.
Gunfire clattered through the hot evening air; children bawled at the sound. In one home, a wife locked the front door and pleaded with her husband not to leave the house. A former army officer barked orders to neighbors who assembled to mount a defense: You go up to the rooftops. You guard the street corners.
Saleh Muhammed, an Amiriyah resident, told a Post special correspondent that he dialed 130 into his cellphone, Baghdad's emergency number. "The Mahdi Army has attacked Amiriyah," he told the Interior Ministry dispatcher.
"The Mahdi Army are not terrorists like you," said the dispatcher at the ministry, which is controlled by a Shiite party and operates closely with militias. "They are people doing their duty. And how could you know that they are the Mahdi Army? Is it written on their foreheads?" He hung up the phone. (4)
“And how could you know that they are the Mahdi Army?” is the same reply that too many in the West use every time someone tries to raise questions on the role of Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army.
“Among other death squads and militias, a truly independent investigation must question the Badr Organisation [the armed wing of the Shia Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq] and the Mehdi Army [the militia of the Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr] within the frame of the US-led occupation and its puppet Iraqi government of which Moqtada al-Sadr with his religious party is one of the most important components.” an article I co-authored with Uruknet’s editor Paola Pisi concluded on 6 July 2006. (5)
This request for a truly independent investigation was enough to attract the lightening strikes coming from the BRussells Tribunal that published and distributed an article by Max Fuller, accusing Paola Pisi and me of doing “exactly what the Occupation wants”. In this smear, Fuller twists, manipulates and distorts facts, evidence and logic so to be able to defend mass murdering and ethnic cleansing perpetrated by the Sadr Brigades and the Mahdi Army. The Middle East is Burning. The BRussells Tribunal Slanders Uruknet, the reply by the Uruknet’s Editorial Staff, far from being a "personal bickering" as it was so vulgarly suggested, tries to light the reality and the horror that Iraq and Iraqis are living every day on their own skin, a reality hidden behind mountains of propaganda.
There is much evidence that the Iraqi puppet government has been minimizing the number of casualties. [On this topic, please read Iraq between genocide and coincidences, an article I wrote on 26 June 2006 ]
A scientific study published at the end of October 2004 on the prestigious British medical journal the Lancet and buried by the US and UK governments and their obedient servants in the media tells us a different story.
‘Mortality before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: cluster sample survey’ reads:
Making conservative assumptions, we think that about 100000 excess deaths, or more have happened since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Violence accounted for most of the excess deaths and air strikes from coalition forces accounted for most violent deaths. (Interpretation)
Most individuals reportedly killed by coalition forces were women and children. (Findings) (7)
The same study reads:
"The researchers found that the majority of deaths were attributed to violence, which were primarily the result of military actions by Coalition forces. Most of those killed by Coalition forces were women and children... Eighty-four percent of the [violent] deaths were reported to be caused by the actions of Coalition forces and 95 percent of those deaths were due to air strikes and artillery." (8)
This study was published two years ago! But today, September 4, 2006, the front page of the “pro-Israeli” Independent reads: “Victims estimated at 41,639”.
This number comes from Iraq Body Count (IBC).
The Western mainstream media resort to IBC to give the number of the Iraqi civilians killed since the 2003 invasion. On this outrageous scandal I have written a number of times:
Darkness and Light
An exchange between Les Roberts and John Sloboda on Iraq Body Count and the Lancet
Silence kills and silence is complicity - email to Phyllis Bennis
Silence kills and silence is complicity - email to United for Peace and Justice
Silence kills and silence is complicity - 'a follow-up'
Iraq between genocide and coincidences
Iraq Body Count - NOT JUST NUMBERS!
Shameless Mother Jones
THE BBC SMEARS MEDIA LENS - an email exchange with the BBC
IPS, nothing different... maybe worse
It’s bad enough when lies and propaganda come from our ruthless leaders and their servants in the state-corporate media. But what should we say when an even more pernicious propaganda comes from those who supposedly should be “on our side”?
The serious questions regarding Iraq Body Count are not a “ridiculous bickering” as a journalist “on the left” and supposedly “on our side” recently wrote me. These questions regard the very central issue of the Iraq invasion and occupation: the scale of the horror brought to the Iraqi People by our governments, with our money and in our name.
But the anti-war movement and the so called “left” is shamefully silent on this subject, when not defending Iraq Body Count against those who dared to ask questions. Why?
Shouldn’t we all be interested in what’s really going on in Iraq?
But this seems to be the point. In the West, too many on the “left” and in the so-called “anti-war movement” are not interested in reality. Iraq seems to exist just in function of their power games. Too often “peace and justice” have become a business that has nothing to do with the oppressed victims’ struggle and all to do instead with the acquisition of privileges and power that neutralizes real dissent and block change. The elites in the “left” and in the antiwar movement have become so obsessed with their own power, with their own “place in society” to be completely indifferent to the facts, to compromise with the perils of rewriting history, conceding points that shouldn't be conceded.
For these two subjects, Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army and Iraq Body Count, pass the truth about the horror that the Iraqi People have been forced to live since the new crusaders invaded their country. On both these subjects, vast sectors of the international anti-war movement and the so-called “left” have been silent at best when not actively cooperating with the propaganda machine.
I have been attacked many times because I keep asking questions to those who claim to be “on our side”. Which side, if I may ask? The only side we all should care is the side of the truth and running after it. The power that be wants us to be ignorant and brainwashed. For that purpose it has lowered the level of political discussion to “we and they”, “good and evil”. It seems too often that on the so-called “left” too many have been doing the same.
Postscript
Donny George, president of Iraq's State Board of Antiquities and Heritage, resigned on August 7 and fled the country soon after, taking refuge in Syria.
Dr George says that, having worked for the SBAH for over 30 years, he retired on 7 August because his position had become “intolerable” over the past year. “The board has come under the increasing influence of al-Sadr [the militant Shi’ite party founded by radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, which has 30 seats in the Iraqi parliament and controls a number of ministries],” says Dr George. “I can no longer work with these people who have come in with the new ministry. They have no knowledge of archaeology, no knowledge of antiquities, nothing.” (…) “A lot of people have been sent to our institutions,” he says. “They are only interested in Islamic sites and not Iraq’s earlier heritage.” According to Dr George, the new President of the SBAH is Haider Farhan, an al-Sadr party member with no relevant experience for the post. “There is nothing to recommend him,” says Dr George. Dr George is well known in museums around the world, but says that he had come under increasing pressure to discontinue these international links which he believed were essential to the activities of the SBAH. “They did not like me having any contact with anyone from outside,” he says. He says that it had even become difficult to maintain a liaison with the Coalition representatives in Baghdad, making it harder to respond quickly to reports of troops damaging archaeological sites. (9)
"Horrible" is how the University of Chicago's McGuire Gibson described the current situation regarding Iraq's ancient monuments and sites to the Washington Post. And the future? "Donny's departure raises a lot of questions, and I think the answers are going to be very disturbing indeed," says Atwood. Jane C. Waldbaum, president of the Archaeological Institute of America, told ARCHAEOLOGY, "We view with regret and sorrow this latest evidence of the deteriorating situation with respect to Iraq's antiquities and hope that every effort will be made to protect Iraq's rich archaeological heritage." (10)
But on the "left" is just wilderness and Ivory Towers...
NOTES
1) UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI), Human Rights Report, 1 May – 30 June 2006
2) Los Angeles Times estimates Iraqi dead at 50,000, June 25th, 2006, Psyche, Science, and Society, Blog of Stephen Soldz: Psychoanalyst, Psychologist, Researcher, and Activist
3) Iraqi government working with Sadr, UPI, 25 August 2006
4) From Baghdad Mosque, a Call to Arms, By Joshua Partlow and Saad al-Izzi, Washington Post, Wednesday, July 12, 2006; A08
5) Iraq: Listening to the Survivors. The killing of Saddam Hussein’s lawyers and the Iraqi testimonies, by Paola Pisi and Gabriele Zamparini, Uruknet and The Cat’s Blog, 6 July 2006
6) Iraq between genocide and coincidences, by Gabriele Zamparini, The Cat’s Blog, 26 June 2006
7) Mortality before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: cluster sample survey, The Lancet, Published online October 29,2004
8) 'Iraqi Civilian Deaths Increase Dramatically After Invasion', October 28, 2004, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
9) Iraq’s top cultural official resigns, By Lucian Harris, The Art Newspaper, 26 August 2006
10) Iraq's Heritage Critically Endangered, Archaeology, August 28, 2006
