Thread: Archive Latest News - Think Tank - 16/08/07 - 03/11/07

Deadly day of ambushes, car bombs in Iraq

BAGHDAD, Aug. 29 Insurgents in Iraq used ambushes and car bombs Wednesday in Baghdad, Kirkuk and Mosul, Arabic news agencies reported.

In one attack in a village near Mosul, insurgents ambushed a police convoy and five policemen and a civilian were killed in the exchange, Alsumaria reported.

Elsewhere near the city, a bomb-laden truck exploded as an Iraqi military convoy passed, killing three soldiers.

A parked car exploded in Baghdad's al-Mansour district, killing one civilian and wounding three others, police said.

Three separate attacks on different offices of the Islamic Higher Council also resulted in the deaths of six civilians, the report said.

In the northern city of Kirkuk, gunmen killed an Iraqi soldier, while sources told Kuwait's Kuna news agency a city policeman was killed by gunmen who raided his home.

In Baghdad, the U.S. military announced one of its soldiers had been killed in combat Tuesday near Kirkuk, the 75th death this month, and 3,733rd since the March 2003 invasion.

Deadly day of ambushes, car bombs in Iraq : World

Shame over fratricidal war as Shiites open new front in Iraq

Baghdad - Another front is opening in Iraq's civil war. What started months ago with individual street fights and the murder of politicians in the provinces of the south is now growing into a bloody power struggle between the rival Shiite parties. The opponents are the radical wing led by the young Islamist cleric Moqtada al-Sadr on the one hand, and the so-called moderate forces on the other, including Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and the SICI party of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim.

Neither side wants to admit that Shiites are now shooting Shiites.

The Sadr movement speaks of "violent clashes between pilgrims and government troops" in Karbala, while al-Maliki blames "criminal gangs" and the "remnants of Saddam's regime," who allegedly disturbed the peace in the holy city and ended the pilgrimage of 2 million Shiites with violence.

In the face of a situation which most Iraqis already consider catastrophic, few of the long-suffering citizens have sympathy for a fratricidal war. They blame it partly on the government.

There is also speculation that the fighting is mainly intended to settle old debts between the families of al-Hakim and al-Sadr, including the distribution of funds belonging to the religious foundations of Najaf and Karbala.

Both families are well-respected by Iraqi Shiites because they have produced famous religious scholars.

Independent observers see the most recent clashes between Shiites as another step towards a situation in which everybody is fighting everybody - as once happened in the Lebanese civil war.

The US military fights Sunni al-Qaeda terrorists, Sunni rebel groups and the Mahdi Army, only a part of which still follows the command of al-Sadr.

The Mahdi Army kills US soldiers - allegedly with Iran's support - as well as Sunni civilians.

The Sunni rebels initially only considered foreign troops as the enemy. But now, in Anbar and Diyala provinces, they also fight al- Qaeda terrorists from other Islamic states, who might be Sunnis themselves but have attracted the hatred of many Iraqi Sunnis over their cruel terror attacks on civilians.

In the north, the militias of the Kurdish parties also fight the al-Qaeda terrorists.

The political leaders of the Shiites meanwhile are trying to keep down the bloody fighting that broke out as a result of their power struggles

Because they refuse to accept the situation after the clashes in Karbala and elsewhere, they are talking about "evil machinations," initiated "by a third party and by followers of Saddam's regime to destroy the holy Shiite shrines."

"They are only lame excuses," says 24-year-old Iraqi student Abbas al-Saadi from Baghdad.

A witness reports that the chaos in Karbala started when al-Sadr followers started chanting political slogans in a crowd by a road block.

Nevertheless, al-Saadi thinks it's the government's fault: "They just refuse to take responsibility because what's happened is the result of the inability of the wardens of the holy sites, who caused panic when they were shooting above the heads of thousands of people."

Shame over fratricidal war as Shiites open new front in Iraq : Middle East World

Sunni leaders are skeptical that wide-ranging deal will be realized

BAGHDAD — Sunni politicians applauded goals set down in an agreement hammered out by the country's top leaders under intense American pressure but expressed doubt Monday that the U.S.-backed prime minister would actually see them through.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and four other senior leaders declared Sunday they had reached a consensus on a number of issues, including freeing detainees held without charge, easing the ban on former Saddam Hussein supporters in government posts, regulating the oil industry and holding provincial elections.

No details were released, and most measures require parliamentary approval.

But in a step toward implementing the deal, U.S. and Iraqi officials announced that coalition forces would increase the number of detainees released during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, which begins next month.


"Releases will start as early as this week and continue through the end of Ramadan," the U.S. command said in a statement. It did not say how many would be freed.

President George W. Bush hailed the agreement, saying it "begins to establish new power-sharing agreements."

"These leaders ... recognize the true and meaningful reconciliation that needs to take place," Bush said in a brief statement Monday upon arrival in Albuquerque, N.M. "They recognize this is a process. Yesterday's agreement reflects their commitment to work together for the benefit of all Iraqis to further the process."

However, the deal did not convince the main Sunni Arab political bloc to take back the government posts they abandoned this month over differences with al-Maliki, a Shiite.

The Sunni walkout has paralyzed the government ahead of a crucial report to Congress by Ambassador Ryan Crocker and Gen. David Petraeus, which will likely determine the fate of the troubled U.S. military mission in Iraq.

Some key Sunni figures dismissed the agreement as a stalling tactic by al-Maliki to ease pressure from Washington.

"Our position is that this meeting represents a new phase of procrastination and does not honestly aim at solving the problems quickly," said Khalaf al-Ilyan, a leader of the Sunni bloc, the Iraqi Accordance Front. "I think that no real or practical solution will come out of this."

With strong opposition to the war in the United States, American diplomats have been pressing for the Iraqis to demonstrate political progress ahead of the Sept. 15 report to Congress.

STLtoday - News - World

Biden says Bush wants to delay chaos in Iraq

DAVENPORT, Iowa - Democrat Joe Biden charged Tuesday that President Bush's policies in Iraq are designed to confuse voters and ensure that a chaotic end to the war is delayed until after he leaves office.
Biden pointed to the turmoil that accompanied the end of the Vietnam War, with Americans plucked from the roof of the U.S. embassy as enemy troops poured into Saigon. He said Bush wants to avoid such a stain on the end of his presidency.

"They would not be the ones who would have to deal with the reality of picking people up off the roofs of the embassy," said Biden, a Delaware senator and presidential candidate.

Biden, who heads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Congress will launch hearings on the Iraq war the first week it's back in session. He rejected Bush's assertion that an increase in the number of troops has improved the situation in Iraq.

Speaking at a news conference, Biden called for a diplomatic offensive that would reach out to major industrial nations as well as Iraq's neighbors.

"It's long past the time we make Iraq the world's problem, not our own," said Biden.

Earlier in the day, Bush defended his war strategy in a speech to veterans and warned that a withdrawal of troops would threaten the United States. But Biden said Democrats and Republicans have concluded that the president's Iraq policy is doomed - he compared it to the Bush administration's response to Hurricane Katrina.

"The president continues to suffer from what I refer to as the Katrina complex," said Biden. "The Katrina complex is ignore all the warnings, bad things happen, continue to follow the same bad failed police and things get worse and worse. That's exactly what this policy is doing to us."

Biden spoke with reporters in the midst of a campaign swing through Iowa, where precinct caucuses launch the presidential nominating process. He blamed Bush for misguided policies that had fueled extremism in the Middle East, and he accused the president of trying to justify the war as a response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Biden said a series of reports have refuted the claim that Iraq is somehow related to the terrorist attacks.

"That should put to rest once and for all the false refrain that President Bush keeps repeating and repeated today," said Biden.

Biden again promoted his plan to separate the warring factions into separate enclaves, saying it's the only real alternative to chaos.

"It is not possible to govern it from the center," said Biden. He said the only other options include "an occupation for a generation, which is not in our DNA" or returning a dictator to power, another unacceptable option.
Instead, Biden said, there should be a central government with very limited powers, mainly protecting the borders and distributing oil revenues.

He argued that the U.S. must act quickly because getting American troops out of Iraq will be complex.

"We cannot sustain 160,000 troops or even another 150,000 troops for another year without breaking the military," said Biden.

He said the diplomatic model to be followed is Bosnia, where thousands of American troops remain and warring factions are at peace.

"They are uniting more and more to become part of Europe," said Biden.

Biden says Bush wants to delay chaos in Iraq - Examiner.com

Iraq leader warns of regional war

An early pullout of American soldiers from Iraq would trigger a full-scale civil war and spark a wider conflict in the region, Iraq's deputy prime minister, Barham Salih, warned this week.

Salih said that was the message he gave a stream of US lawmakers visiting Baghdad in the lead-up to pivotal testimony that President George W Bush's top officials in Iraq will present to the US Congress in around two weeks.

"A premature withdrawal of troops from Iraq will be a disaster, not only for Iraq but for the region and the international community as a whole," Salih said this week.

"It will lead to an all-out civil war, it will lead to a regional war, in my opinion, because the fate of Iraq is crucial to the regional balance and to regional security."

Opposition Democrats and some senior Republicans have called for US troops to start leaving Iraq after more than four years of war that has killed 3,700 American soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqis.

The US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, and US ambassador Ryan Crocker are expected to appear before Congress in the second week of September.

Their testimony on Iraq's security and political situation could prompt a shift in Washington's Iraq policy. Bush is under mounting pressure to show Iraq's weak and divided Shiite-led government that the US commitment is not open-ended. However, he has pleaded for patience and cited progress in recent months after a reduction in militant attacks.

In a speech last week Bu sh sought to back his case for keeping US troops in Iraq by drawing parallels between Iraq and the Vietnam War.

From the beginning of the Iraq War, the White House has resisted analogies to Vietnam, apparently convinced that any association with such an unpopular venture was a political loser for the president.

When Bush was asked at a news conference in June 2006 whether he saw any parallels between Iraq and Vietnam, he replied with a simple "No."

That posture changed markedly with Bush's speech in Kansas City when he sought to focus the audience on what he described as the horrific consequences of US withdrawal - Vietnamese re-education camps in which many perished and the hundreds of thousands of people murdered by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.

The inference was clear: people who think America can get out of Iraq with minimal human costs are sadly mistaken.

"Whatever your position is on that debate," Bush said, "one unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like `boat people,' `re-education camps' and `killing fields."'
Salih also said Iraq's 350,000-strong forces were not ready to assume full responsibility for security.

Debate in Washington over the war and the failure of Iraq's government to use the breathing space provided by extra US troops to foster reconciliation has become so charged that some Democrats including presidential hopeful Senator Hillary Clinton have called for Prime Minister Nuri al- Maliki to be replaced. Salih said such comments were unhelpful.

"Those who are demanding the replacement of Mr Maliki need to offer an alternative, because changing the government just for the sake of it without offering a credible alternative that can turn things for the better will not be useful," he said.

Asked if the collapse of Maliki's government would plunge the country deeper into crisis, Salih said: "In the absence of a credible alternative, a better alternative, it would be problematic, chaotic. In the context of Iraq, when you talk about problems, you are talking serious problems."

He repeatedly said there were no quick fixes to Iraq's woes.

Some key laws could be ratified by parliament by the end of the year, Salih said.

These included a draft law that will ease restrictions on former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party from joining the civil service and the military. Many members are Sunni Arabs who feel persecuted by Maliki's government. That timeline will likely prove too long for US lawmakers, who are demanding concrete progress on political benchmarks seen as vital to bridging the deep divide between warring Shiites and minority Sunni Arabs.

Parliament reconvenes on September 4 after a month-long recess.
The government has yet to present any of the key draft laws, including draft legislation that aims at equitable sharing of Iraq's vast oil wealth among its different sects and ethnic groups.

Salih said: "If we decided to go and present these laws, probably we will be able to get a majority on most of them," but he added that this would not be enough.

"We are in a system where there must be a much wider margin because these laws are designed to bring about national unity. It's not just about majority rule," he said.

The Standard - China's Business Newspaper

More than 4 million Iraqis have fled their homes - UN agency

More than four million Iraqis have been forced to flee their home by ferocious sectarian violence and the monthly rate of displacement is rising, the United Nations refugee agency said on Tuesday as the US pledged $30 million to help educate displaced Iraqi children.

"An estimated 4.2 million Iraqis have been uprooted from their homes, with the monthly rate of displacement climbing to over 60,000 people compared to 50,000 previously," UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) spokeswoman Jennifer Pagonis told journalists. "Displacement is rising as Iraqis are finding it harder to get access to social services in Iraq and many Iraqis are choosing to leave ethnically mixed areas before they are forced to do so," she added.

More than two million Iraqis are displaced within the country, of whom around half were uprooted following the February 2006 Samarra bombings, seen as the catalyst for the latest wave of sectarian conflict, the UNHCR said.

"Many are barely surviving in makeshift camps, inaccessible to aid workers for security reasons," Pagonis warned.

Neighbors Syria and Jordan have shouldered the brunt of the burden of Iraqis fleeing the country altogether, with over 1.4 million in Syria and between 500,000-750,000 in Jordan, the UNHCR said.

Speaking from Singapore, the international president of the Christian humanitarian organization, World Vision, called the refugees ""forgotten people" on Tuesday, criticizing the US, European countries and Iraq's Arab neighbors for not aiding the refugees sufficiently.

"We have great concern for the Iraqi refugees that are in Jordan. We're working there. We're concerned about the refugees in Syria. These are forgotten people," Dean Hirsch, told AFP. "The US government does not want to recognize them. The European Union wants to keep quiet on it," and the refugees are also a sensitive matter for the Jordanians, Hirsch said on the sidelines of a meeting of World Vision's top governing body.

The number of Iraqi asylum seekers in Europe in the first half of 2007 rose to nearly 20,000, the same number received during the whole of 2006, according to the UNHCR.

Hirsch said World Vision and other international relief agencies present "the only hope" for the refugees who lack proper shelter, water and food. "It's a very tragic story ... and it is wrong," he said.

UNHCR has previously called on the international community to do much more in helping deal with the influx of refugees, which is the largest population movement in the region since the Palestinian expulsion from the new state of Israel in 1948.

The Daily Star - Politics - More than 4 million Iraqis have fled their homes - UN agency

President Talabani Congratulates Abdullah Gul

President Talabani congratulated Abdullah Gul, the elected President of Turkey.

His Excellency expressed his expectations to see the promotion and cooperation of the mutual relationship between Turkey and Iraq in political, security, economy, and culture fields.

He also congratulates Mr. Abdullah Gul for getting the trust of Parliament and Turkish people.

Finally he hopes good health, pleasure, and success to Mr. Abdullah Gul in establishing democracy and peace in both countries.

PUKmedia :: English - President Talabani Congratulates Abdullah Gul

Austrian Air Lines Stops its Flights to Erbil

The Austrian Air Lines has stopped its flights to Erbil International Airport for two weeks after the fabric news that published by Medias which claimed that a Sweden airplane came under fire while landing in al-Sulaimaniyah International Airport, which forced the Kurdish residents in European countries to travel via Turkish Air Lines.

It’s worth mentioning that Austrian Air Lines carries out 4 flights in a week to Erbil International Airport.

PUKmedia :: English - Austrian Air Lines Stops its Flights to Erbil

The Duties and Interests of Neighborhood

Kurdistan Region is part of federal Iraq ,this people and nation are ancient neighbor to Iran and Turkey states. The duty and interests of neighborhood calls for consonant consultation ,dialogue and mutual understanding between neighboring states for settling crisis and problems among them.

Those two neighboring states have hundreds of jet fighters ,artilleries, hundred thousands of soldiers and numerous equipments, they have a culture of governing and experienced in international relations. If all their military capabilities ,budget and international relations are helpless in controlling the border and not letting Ansar Al-Islam to sometimes infiltrate into Kurdistan Region territories and martyr our comrades or being helpless in stopping the infiltration of PIJAK and PKK forces from their borders (as they say ), how can KRG with its current situation ,little experience in governing ,without jet fighters and a limited budget control the borders ,even those armed groups sometimes carry out actions in the depth of their territories and away from this ,partisan struggle all over the world cant be easily contained.

Of course our people over past decades suffered from being occupied ,pursued, suppressed and mass killing ,that is why they always hope to live in stability and peace ,hoping to avoid facing wars and crisis , especially with states like Iran and Turkey .In the times of calamities and the exodus ,Iran opened its borders and embraced the Kurdish displaced .Moreover, in the struggle against the Baath regime in Iraq the blood of hundreds of Peshmarga and Iranian arm forces mixed .Over all that years of struggle the interests of both sides were protected , today these interests should remain protected.

Over the past few the Iranian and Turkish artilleries are daily shelling the border villages of Iraqi Kurdistan Region as a result many civilians martyred or wounded ,the houses in dozens of villages destroyed and their inhabitants left their houses living in the caves or being displaced in the cities, the daily life of people in these areas is deteriorating ,world media are daily reporting on this shelling and the displaced people are complaining of being un guilty .The KRG is doing its best in stabilizing the borders ,providing the supplies and temporary rehabilitation o the displaced people Both sides need consultation ,stability ,and cooperation because the security o the borders is in the interest of both sides.

KRG must discuss this problem with these two states officially through federal Iraq government and reach its complains ,take serious and quick steps to stop this shelling and together make necessary steps or protecting the borders .

We ask these armed groups to take away this war from Iraqi Kurdistan and don’t let our experiment face problems .For decades our people are struggling and making sacrifices .it is time for our people to live in peace and enjoy stability.

PUKmedia :: English - The Duties and Interests of Neighborhood

President Talabani: al-Maliki Alternative is al-Maliki

After his arrival to Sulaimaniyah International Airport, President Talabani held a press conference.

And in answering a question for one of the reporters about if there is an alternative for the PM Nouri al-Maliki, President Talabani said “the alternative for al-Maliki is al-Maliki.”

Also in answering another question about the Iranian bombardment for Kurdistan Region areas he said “we discussed this issue with the Iranian Ambassador to Iraq Mr. Kadhimi Qumi and he said that the bombardment will stop imminently.”

PUKmedia :: English - President Talabani: al-Maliki Alternative is al-Maliki