At Fallujah hospital they cannot offer any statistics on children born with birth defects – there are just too many. Parents don’t want to talk. “Families bury their newborn babies after they die without telling anyone,” says hospital spokesman Nadim al-Hadidi. “It’s all too shameful for them.”

One among an unusually high number of children in Basra fighting leukaemia. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS.

“We recorded 672 cases in January but we know there were many more,” says Hadidi. He projects pictures on to a wall at his office: children born with no brain, no eyes, or with the intestines out of their body.

Facing a frozen image of a child born without limbs, Hadidi says parents’ feelings usually range between shame and guilt. “They think it’s their fault, that there’s something wrong with them. And it doesn’t help at all when some elder tells them it’s been ‘god’s punishment’.”

The pictures are difficult to look at. And, those responsible for all this have closed their eyes.

“In 2004 the Americans tested all kinds of chemicals and explosive devices on us: thermobaric weapons, white phosphorous, depleted uranium…we have all been laboratory mice for them,” says Hadidi, turning off the projector.

The months that followed the invasion of Iraq in 2003 saw persistent demonstrations against the occupation forces. But it wasn’t until 2004 when this city by the Euphrates river to the west of Baghdad saw its worst.

On Mar. 31 of that year, images of the dismembered bodies of four mercenaries from the U.S. group Blackwater hanging from a bridge circulated around the world. Al-Qaeda claimed the brutal action – and the local population paid the price for Operation Phantom Fury that followed. According to the Pentagon, this was the biggest urban battle since Hue (Vietnam, 1968).

The first crackdown came in April 2004 but the worst was in November of that year. Random house-to- house checks gave way to intense night bombings. The Americans said they used white phosphorus “to illuminate targets at night.” But a group of Italian journalists soon gave documentary evidence that white phosphorus had been just another of the banned weapons used against civilians by the U.S. troops.

The total number of victims is still unknown. In fact, many of them are not born yet.

Abdulkadir Alrawi, a doctor at Fallujah hospital, is just back from examining an intriguing new case. “This girl was born with the Dandy Walker syndrome. Her brain is split in two and I doubt she’ll survive.” As he speaks, the lights go off again in the whole hospital.

“We lack the most basic infrastructure, how do they want us to cope with an emergency like this?”

According to a study released by the Switzerland-based International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health in July 2010, “the increases in cancer, leukaemia and infant mortality and perturbations of the normal human population birth sex ratio in Fallujah are significantly greater than those reported for the survivors of the A-Bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.”

Researchers found there had been a 38-fold increase in leukaemia (17-fold in the Japanese locations). Reputed analysts such as Noam Chomsky have labelled such conclusions as “immensely more embarrassing than the Wikileaks leaks on Afghanistan.”

Samira Alaani, chief doctor at Fallujah hospital, took part in a study in close collaboration with the World Health Organisation. Several tests conducted in London point to unusually large amounts of uranium and mercury in the hair root of those affected. That could be the evidence linking the use of prohibited weapons to the extent of congenital problems in Fallujah.

Other than the white phosphorus, many point to depleted uranium (DU), a radioactive element which, according to military engineers, significantly increases the penetration capacity of shells. DU is believed to have a life of 4.5 billion years, and it has been labelled the “silent murderer that never stops killing.” Several international organisations have called on NATO to investigate whether DU was also used during the Libyan war.

This month the Iraqi Health Ministry, in close collaboration with the WHO, will launch its first study ever on congenital malformations in the governorates of Baghdad, Anbar, Thi Qar, Suleimania, Diala and Basra.

Sandwiched between the borders of Iran and Kuwait, Basra sits above massive oil reserves. The population in this southernmost province has suffered fighting much more than any other region: from the war with Iran in the 1980s to the Gulf War in 1991 and the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

A study by the University of Baghdad pointed out that cases of birth defects had increased tenfold in Basra two years before the invasion in 2003. The trend is still on the rise.

Basra Children’s Hospital, specialising in paediatric oncology, opened in 2010. Funded with U.S. capital, this facility was initiated by former U.S. first lady Laura Bush. But like the hospital in Fallujah, this supposedly state-of-the-art facility lacks basic equipment.

“The X-ray machine spent over a year-and-a-half stored at Basra port due to an administrative dispute over who should pay port fees. Our children would die as they waited for radiotherapy treatment that did not come,” says Laith Shakr Al-Sailhi, father of a sick boy and director of the Children’s Cancer Association of Iraq.

“The waiting list for treatment in Baghdad is endless and time is never on the side of the patients,” says Al- Sailhi from the barracks that host his NGO headquarters next to the hospital.

“Besides, these children’s diseases also lead to economic ruin of their families. Those who can afford it pay up to 7,000 dollars in Syria or up to 12,000 dollars in Jordan for treatment. The cheapest option is Iran, with rates at an average of 5,000 dollars.

“Today, families are flocking to Tehran for their children to be treated. Many of them are sleeping in the streets because they can’t afford to pay a hotel room.”

By Karlos Zurutuza and - -
RAMADI, Iraq, Mar 27 2012 (IPS)

Barely three months after the pullout by U.S. troops, sectarian clashes between Sunni and Shia Muslims have begun to take a heavy toll across Iraq.

Tight security in Baghdad for the Arab Summit this week. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS.

Armed groups from both sides have reportedly clashed on Iraqi soil in recent months. In a video posted on the Internet, a Sunni insurgent group under the name of the ‘Anbar Brigade’ claimed an attack on a convoy of buses escorted by Iraqi army vehicles and allegedly carrying Shia militiamen to the Syrian border.

Anbar region to the west of Baghdad has been a hotbed of Sunni militancy in the past.

Many fear that the overwhelmingly Sunni local population in Anbar and the long and porous border with Syria is a perfect environment for Al Qaeda to turn this region into the massive insurgent stronghold it used to be.

Shia groups on the other hand are alleged to be receiving weapons from Iran. Al Alwani, Sunni member of Parliament, tells IPS at his house in Ramadi, the administrative capital of Anbar region, that the local airport at Najaf, a Shia holy city in the south of Iraq, is the main hub for receiving Iranian weapons.

“We have documented evidence that Iran is logistically and financially backing Al Qaeda in Iraq,” Anbar region governor Mohamed Qasim Abid, by profession an engineer who trained in Germany, tells IPS at his fortified office on the outskirts of Ramadi.

“From the very beginning, every action by terrorists has helped to justify the repression and marginalisation Iraqi Sunnis are facing since 2003.”

The gap between Shia and Sunni Iraqi Arabs grows by the day amidst a crisis that has sparked fears of renewed sectarian conflict. Prime Minister Maliki triggered a political crisis in December when he ordered the arrest of Iraq’s Sunni Vice President Tarik Hashemi – just one day after U.S. troops officially left Iraqi soil – over allegations of promoting terrorism.

The Shia prime minister denies such moves are politically motivated, but Sunnis say they are being increasingly marginalised from political power-sharing.

Now hosted by local Kurds in the Kurdish Autonomous Region in the north of Iraq, Hashemi has been constantly blaming Maliki for the sudden surge of violence.

Iraq Body Count has recorded the killing of hundreds since the Americans pulled out in December. A suspected Al Qaeda group sympathetic to the Sunnis has claimed several of these attacks which it linked with both Hashemi’s arrest and to the Arab Summit being held Mar 27 to 29 in Baghdad for the first time in more than 20 years.

On Mar. 20, more than 30 coordinated bomb attacks across the country left 50 people dead and more than 250 injured. The ‘Islamic State of Iraq’ – the Iraqi wing of Al Qaeda – claimed responsibility for the bombings. In a statement the group called this week’s gathering “the meeting of the Arab tyrants.”

Behind the concrete walls of Baghdad’s Green Zone, Ali Al Shalah, MP from Nouri al-Maliki’s ruling coalition categorically rejects his Sunni counterparts’ views.

“I’ve heard about volunteer fighters crossing the border from Lebanon to join (Syrian President Bashar) Assad but I assure you that the Iraqi government is working solidly to prevent the participation of any armed group from our territory.” Any changes on the other side of the border, he says, “will inevitably affect Iraq’s integrity.”

He also rejects the idea of any links between Tehran and Al Qaeda. He points to “other Arab countries” behind the Islamic militants – meaning Sunni groups. The last wave of attacks, he says, has been “a show of force by the Sunnis and an open challenge to the Iraqi government.

“Despite the constant aggression, we will keep fighting to claim our rightful space between our Arab and Persian neighbours; between Sunnis and Shias, but avoiding any foreign interference,” Shalah says. He describes himself as “a writer and poet with a strong political responsibility.”

Saad Yousif al Muttalibi, a senior official at the Ministry of Dialogue and Reconciliation makes a distinction between “insurgents” and “terrorists”.

“Reconciliation is under way with those Sunni fighters who fought against the American occupation; they have either joined the Awakening Movement or simply pulled down their weapons when the Americans left,” says Muttalibi from his residence in downtown Baghdad.

“The main obstacle for security are those Sunni religious extremists like Al Qaeda or Ansar al Sunna. They are terrorists and it’s impossible to bring them back to society so we don’t bother to speak with them.

“Unfortunately we have discovered that certain government officials have been in close collaboration with Al Qaeda by either providing them with either weapons or intelligence.”

But the reconciliation process might not be as smooth as Muttalibi claims. IPS spoke with a Sunni fighter who said: “We have enough infrastructure to operate throughout the whole country, we’re just waiting orders from our commanders.”

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents and - -
ANKARA, Mar 24 2012 (IPS)

Enough calls to reason. It is time for collective action. That was the message Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu sent Thursday to his European Union (EU) colleagues, whom he will be meeting later this week in Brussels.

U.S.-Turkey relations have likely affected Turkey's response to the Syrian crisis. Above, Sec. of State Clinton and Foreign Min. Davutoglu in London. Credit: U.S. Embassy London/ CC by 2.0

Davutoglu’s call for force rather than dialogue came a day after the 15-member United Nations Security Council (UNSC) unanimously demanded that Damascus immediately implement a peace plan formulated by UN and Arab League special envoy Kofi Annan and discussed with Assad earlier this month.

Since hostilities between Damascus and anti-regime demonstrators in Homs and other provincial cities began a year ago, at least 8,000 have died, according to U.N. estimates, as protests have escalated to armed clashes.

Until October 2011, Turkish leaders attempted to convince Assad to use moderation. But those efforts led nowhere.

Turkish position up to that point was consistent with a decade-long rapprochement between Ankara and Damascus, which followed 65 years of relations strained by a territorial dispute over Hatay, formerly an independent French protectorate and now part of Turkey.

In 2003, relations improved after the Turkish Parliament voted against American troops crossing the country to enter Iraq from the north. At that time, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development (AK) Party held the majority position in parliament.

By 2009, a series of diplomatic exchanges and summits, culminating with reciprocal visits by Turkish President Abdullah Gul to Damascus in May of that year and Assad to Istanbul two months later, sealed what appeared to be close ties.

In addition to a score of commercial treaties, a military agreement was also signed and a joint strategic committee established. Visas were abolished; a telecommunications network linking the Black Sea with the Persian Gulf through Syria was agreed; and Turkish private investment flowed into southwards.

As a result, the Ankara’s about-face towards the Assad dynasty has surprised both business and political observers. But a closer look reveals that several reasonable motives for Turkey’s shift.

Turkey’s new stance

One explanation is that Erdogan, a household name in the Arab world since he harshly criticised President Shimon Peres in 2009 for Israel’s Cast Lead Operation against Gaza and downgraded relations with Israel after the Mavi Marmara incident in May 2010, could tarnish his image by appearing to condone Assad’s bloody crackdown.

Indeed, Syria has become the black sheep of the Arab world, even for those who dispensed kisses on both of Assad’s cheeks five months ago, and Gadhafi’s fall in October also seems to have persuaded the Turkish leadership that Assad’s end is inevitable.

Turkey is also trying to position itself as the democratic paradigm for Muslim statehood and society and restore its commercial pre-eminence in North Africa. In Libya alone, regime change has caused Turkish businesses to lose or put on hold contracts totalling 25 billion U.S. dollars.

In addition, Erdogan and Davutoglu’s new tone coincides with warming relations with the White House, following Ankara’s decision to be a loyal partner despite its earlier objections to foreign intervention in Libya.

Turkey and the United States

Turkey has become an indispensable ally for the United States, in part because of uncertainty over Iraq’s future following the departure of U.S. troops in December.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta held talks in Ankara the day after the troops’ withdrawal ceremony. A few weeks earlier, American drones stationed in Iraq had been transferred to the U.S. base at Incirlik, in southern Turkey.

“I suppose many more Turkey-based drones will be flying over Iraq in order to continue monitoring things,” says Soli Ozel, a professor at Kadir Has University and expert on the Middle East.

In December, Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Selcuk Unal said Washington had proposed to Turkey to take over the influential role of training Iraqi military personnel, after the U.S. pullout.

“We will be considering it,” confirmed Unal.

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden also held meetings with Gul and Erdogan in December, and on March 13, CIA chief David Petraeus a last minute stop here to meet the PM and the director of the Turkish National Security Agency (MIT).

Similar activity by American high-ranking defence and intelligence officers had been observed last spring.

Opening Pandora’s Box

In addition to providing safe haven for some 17,000 Syrian refugees, the Turks provide advice to the opposition Syrian National Council (SNC) as well as some training and support to the Free Syrian Army (FSA), whose members have taken refuge in Turkey.

Some in political and diplomatic circles here speculate that Erdogan’s AKP is keen to see a Sunni-led government in Damascus replace Assad and his regime, whose security forces, in particular, are dominated by fellow Alawis, who belong to a sect that is an offshoot of Shi’a Islam.

In the larger regional context, such an outcome would align with the interests of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, both of which have called for greater foreign intervention in Syria, including supplying arms to the opposition. The AKP, which is an Islamist party, may also favour such a result, given that three of every four Turks are Sunni Muslims.

Ankara’s concern is not Assad’s fate, but the Pandora’s Box his demise will open. With some 30 million ethnic Kurds in the region, half of whom live in southern and southeastern Turkey and the rest in Iraq, Iran and Syria, the risk of a pan-Kurdish movement is real.

Kurds have not revolted against Damascus and are autonomous in northern Iraq, but have been politically and militarily active in Turkey and Iran for decades.

Turkey has been at war since 1984 with the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), a rebel group classified as a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the United States, EU and Syria. The conflict has killed some 35,000 people, most of them in the southeast.

Since November 2011, Damascus has occasionally been accused by the Turkish media of assisting the PKK against Turkish security forces operating in the south. However, there is no evidence of such assistance, and Syrian Kurds, most of whom live near the Turko-Syrian border, do not seem disposed to take up arms.

“We want an autonomous, secular state where we can exist under democratic rules,” says Ali Shemdin, a senior official of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Syria (KDPS), in a statement that does not sound especially revolutionary.

But in recent weeks, Iraqi Kurds have given signals that they would be prepared to evolve from their autonomous status to an independent state. Dramatic events in Syria and strengthening of Turkish determination to annihilate PKK could ignite cross-border nationalism.

This threat may be the best explanation for the gap between Ankara’s anti-Assad punitive rhetoric and its corresponding actions.

Excerpt:

By Karlos Zurutuza
BAGHDAD, Mar 16 2012 (IPS)

Dozens of bodies bludgeoned to death pop up in Baghdad’s dusty streets like the remains of a wreckage on a beach. They are the corpses of homosexuals and followers of the ‘emo’ fashion who dare to break with the strict canons of the Shia orthodoxy in power.

Sadr City has turned into a hell for homosexuals and followers of the ‘emo’ movement. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS.

“They crushed his head with a concrete block. His name was Saif Asmar and he was a close friend of mine; tomorrow it could be me”.

Ruby (fake name) can hardly cope with his anger and fear as he holds a photo of his friend, barely recognisable after the brutal murder. Since the beginning of the year, death squads have been targeting gay men as well as those who dress in a distinctive Western-influenced style called ‘emo’.

Ruby talks about a surge in the attacks since Feb. 6 that, according to unofficial sources, has led to the killing of more than 80 homosexuals.

“That day they killed Ahmad Arusa in Sadr City and four other people in Geyara – two Shia neighbourhoods in eastern Baghdad. Earrings, nose rings, tattoos…all those are synonymous with either being homosexual, worshipping the devil or both things at a time,” says this young man who left home a month ago after he was threatened.

In a statement released last January, the Iraqi Interior Ministry labelled the ‘emo’ movement “Satanism”. It said “a special police force would tackle the issue”.

Now, the increasing death toll under concrete blocks in the Shia dominated Sadr City in Baghdad adds to those reportedly burned with acid in the Shia neighbourhood Khadimiya, in western Baghdad. Whatever the method, most of those killed had previously found their names on one of the lists littering the streets of the Iraqi capital.

Ruby points directly to the Mehdi militia – a former insurgent group led by cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. Such crimes are being committed in complete impunity, says Ruby.

“Ours is a militia-run government,” complains this young man on the run. “The only possible solution is that Western governments put pressure on Iraq to end this nightmare.”

Dalal Jumma from the Organisation of Women’s Freedom In Iraq concurs, and complains about the lack of a “mandatory separation between state and religion.

“The militias’ letters hanging on the walls even accuse homosexuals or ‘emo’ followers of ‘Satanism for participating in the martyrdom of Imam Hussein’ – the Shia community leader killed in the Seventh century. How can we deal with such monstrosity?” says Jumma at the NGO’s headquarters in Karrada district in southeast Baghdad.

IPS has had access to one of the letters allegedly found in Sadr City – it had a list of 33 individuals classified under their residence block numbers.

“If you don’t quit such licentious attitudes in four days, God’s punishment will fall on you at the hands of the holy Mujahideen – Islamic fighters”, reads a threat written between pictures of two guns.

From Moqtada al-Sadr’s office in Sadr City, local political and religious leader Brahim Jawary denies any involvement in the killings. He calls for “a thorough investigation of any crime, including those committed against morality and the laws of god as a whole.”

It wasn’t a letter on a wall but an email that made Madi (also fake name) run away from her family five weeks back.

“They threatened to tell my family that I am a lesbian if I didn’t leave the country immediately,” recalls this 26-year-old woman in an interview with IPS at an undisclosed location in Baghdad. Apparently, Madi’s fears were far from being groundless.

“Many lesbians die in Iraq at the hands of older brothers. It is yet another ‘honour killing’, a ‘domestic matter’ over which the government will never conduct any investigation.”

London-based NGO Iraqi LGBT estimates that more than 720 gays have been killed in Iraq by extremist militias in the past six years. Madi says she’s lost many close friends.

“Moqtada al-Sadr’s militiamen and Iraqi Security Forces are the most aggressive against us, especially since a fatwa (a ruling in Islamic law) released four years ago said that homosexuals ‘should be executed in the most severe way.’”

Madi says many have been dismembered or burnt alive. She says doctors know the nature of such crimes by the state in which the bodies arrive. IPS has confirmed such claims with doctors who preferred to remain anonymous.

In a report published in August 2009, Human Rights Watch reported that many of the victims were interrogated before being murdered to extract names of other potential victims.

“They practise grotesque tortures, including gluing men’s anuses shut as punishment,” the New York Based NGO added. Combined with massive food intake and diuretics, such practice leads to an atrocious death of the victims.”

Anger is also tangible inside the Iraqi Parliament. “We’ve been moving backwards since 2003 on human rights”, says Ashwaq Jaf, a Kurdish Alliance MP. “The crux of the matter,” she says, “is that we have two penal codes: there’s the Iraqi Constitution, but also the sharia. Contradictions between both often lead to ambiguous and perilous vacuums.”

Not everybody inside the Green Zone shares such a viewpoint. “The stigma of being gay in Iraq is only a reflection of our society,” says Saad al-Muttabili, a senior official with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki’s Dawa party.

Muttabili points to “either Sunni militias close to al Qaeda or Iran-backed militias” – without any reference to Moqtada al-Sadr’s paramilitary group’s involvement. Maliki owes his second term to Sadr’s support.

“The situation is gradually coming to normal and it is not surprising to come across gay couples holding hands in Karrada,” says Muttabili. “For the time being, several shopkeepers of the commercial district have removed skulls, T-shirts or any other item (suggesting ‘emo’ membership) that could lead to unfortunate misunderstandings.”

Excerpt:

By Karlos Zurutuza and - -
SAMARRA, Mar 13 2012 (IPS)

“We have not been paid since the Americans left Iraq last December. If nothing changes, I will abandon this checkpoint,” Saif Ahmed tells IPS. He is one of the militiamen who claim to have defeated Al Qaeda in Iraq.

A Sahwa militiaman in Samarra. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS.

“It was us, and not the Americans, who defeated Al Qaeda in Iraq,” says Sheik Khalid Fleieh, one of the advocates of the ‘Awakening Councils’ – Sahwa in Arabic – recalls at his heavily guarded house in downtown Samarra.

The Sahwa militia, also known as the “Sons of Iraq”, were a paramilitary group set up by a coalition of different tribal leaders to ensure safety in their communities. The movement was founded in the mainly Sunni regions of Anbar and Salahadin in central Iraq in 2005. In less than a year, the “Sons of Iraq” were already a parallel security force alongside the existing ones, operating across the country.

“Al Qaeda came to our country immediately after the invasion with the pretext of fighting the occupiers. At first we fought together but soon the Jihadists began to kill our own people: tribal leaders, lawyers, teachers, engineers…everyone who played a visible role in our society became a target automatically,” says Fleieh.

In fact, many of today’s Sahwa fighters are former insurgents who turned into pro-government militias at some point. After its inception in 2005 they received salaries of around 250 dollars monthly for manning checkpoints and patrolling their own areas. But those low revenues have vanished today with the withdrawal of the Americans.

“The original plan was to gradually integrate our men into the Iraqi security forces but now we’re all starting to realise that those were just fake promises,” Abdullatif Majid Latif, commander of the militia in Samarra, explains at the militia headquarters in the city.

“I have 2,000 men who have families to take care of in a desperate situation. All of them still remain loyal to Sheikh Khalid Fleieh but I wonder how long will this last,” adds the military official.

Abdullatif’s men belong to the approximately 100,000 today lining up in the Sahwa militia. The first stage of an initially ambitious plan was to incorporate a quarter of them into the security forces. Today, things are not working as expected. Everyone wonders what will happen to thousands of broken armed men.

Samarra Sahwa militiaman Abdulljabar Abdulrahim is categorical: “If I’m not paid in April I’ll quit and look for something else, either in the construction or the cleaning sectors,” he says, armed with an AK-47 rifle and dressed in sweatpants and slippers.

“My uniform collapsed after four years of service and I cannot buy a new one because I can hardly get bread for my kids,” says the militiaman as he mechanically manages the heavy traffic in his district in northern Samarra.

Among the local unarmed Samarrans, opinions range from compassion to indifference.

“The poor chaps are now waiting until they’re killed by a terrorist for doing a job nobody is paying. Could anyone be more unfortunate?” says Yousef Abdulhamid at a grocery stall close to Samarra’s iconic ziggurat-shaped minaret. A few hundred metres from there, a poster hangs on a wall in memory of Nasaif Omar Jassim, a Sahwa militiaman allegedly killed by Al Qaeda two months ago.

“I couldn’t care less about their fate,” says Rahim, a local taxi driver. “They joined the invaders, they were used like tissues and now they’re thrown to the dustbin. What did they expect from the Americans?” Rahim, despite the recent withdrawal of U.S. troops, says he is living under another occupation; “of Iran through the Shia political parties in power.”

Some others seem more optimistic. From his office in the city hall, Mayor Omar Hassan Mohammed points to a “significant improvement” in the security situation. The reason, he says, is the perfect balance between the troops deployed in Samarra.

“We have central government forces alongside those from the ministry of interior and, of course the Sahwa militia. Except for some isolated incidents, security is almost fully granted.”

Today no one disputes that the “Sons of Iraq” have helped to significantly reduce the levels of violence in the country. But many, starting from Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki fear that such groups can become uncontrollable in the future and turn into “armed Sunni opposition”.

From his home in Baghdad’s Karrada district in the south-east of the capital, Saad al Muttabili, member of Dawa, Nouri al-Maliki’s party, shares his view on the Sahwa issue.

“The ‘Sons of Iraq’ programme succeeded in attracting many armed insurgents towards the new government but it was a programme initially set up and coordinated by the Americans,” he tells IPS.

“It took an awful lot of time for Americans to transfer their database that included 97,000 names. Among those we found a 13-year-old kid and a 70-year-old man… Later, we had to get rid of those with previous criminal records, or simply those who had not gone through any specific military training.”

As the future of the “Sons of Iraq” remains on standby, a growing number of Sunnis say they are being systematically discriminated against by the Shia coalitions in power. Many fear Al Qaeda could become the only possible source of income for those tens of thousands kept out of the state security forces.

Excerpt:

“I’d say there are around 5,000 of us in the country, but if you ask me next week we may well be under 3,000. After twenty centuries of history in Mesopotamia, we Mandaeans, are about to vanish.” Anxiety about the future of his people is more than evident in the figures given by Saad Atiah Majid, chairman of Basra’s Mandaean Council.

Mandaean spiritual leader Mazin Naif Rahim by an improvised baptism pool in Basra. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS.

Dubbed “the Christians of St. John” by the Portuguese who arrived in Basra in the 17th century, Mandaeans follow the teachings of John the Baptist. Baptism – their central ritual – has been held on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates for almost two millennia.

“It’s true that we had our share of pain and misery during Saddam’s times but then our people would leave the country mainly due to economic reasons. By contrast, after 2003, following the brutal harassment by radical Islamists, Mandaeans began to flee en masse to Kurdistan, Syria, Europe,” says Majid.

Behind him, a tiny white cloth and an olive branch hang from a wooden cross. They call it drabsa – it’s the closest thing to a flag Mandaeans have. At the centre where this community gathers in Iraq’s southern oil hub, walls are covered with pictures of bearded men dressed in white robes, celebrating collective baptisms in the river.

According to a report by Human Rights Watch released in February 2011, 90 percent of Mandaeans have either died or left the country since the invasion by the U.S.-led forces in 2003. Mandaeans have repeatedly called for evacuation of their entire people.

The head of the cult, Sheikh Sattar Jabbar al-Hulu, is now based in Australia. For the time being, Mazin Rahim Naif still remains in his native Basra. This young man in his late twenties is the local spiritual leader.

“Until 1991 we would conduct our ritual in the river, but the dire security situation and pollution have forced us to improvise our worship in these small pools inside our temples,” Rahim tells IPS. The priest adds that the local council has repeatedly denied them access to an area by the river, a refusal particularly painful ahead of an imminent and important religious event.

“On March 17, for five days, we celebrate each year the ‘Pronaya’ to recreate the making of the world of light. Do you think this is an appropriate place for it?”

Later, the young priest hands us the ‘Treasure of God’, the sacred book of this community written in the Mandaean-Aramaic language.

“We translated it into Arabic because there were rumours among Muslims that it incited to apostasy,” recalls Rahim. “We wanted to show everybody that we also believe in one god, that we pray and that we also practise zakat (charity).”

But the effort does not seem enough to avoid increasing discrimination.

“With his student record, my son should be eligible for a good position as an engineer in the local petrochemical industry, but he has been unemployed since he graduated three years ago,” complains Tahseen, a local Mandaean. “The best jobs are given to those families who lost a member in the war against Iran, or during Saddam’s repression. The privileges are for those who have ‘martyrs’. Ours do not count according to their standards.”

The five-hour drive from Basra to Baghdad goes upriver with the Tigris and Euphrates. It’s a road often overloaded with oil trucks and cars with coffins strapped to their roof racks. These are bound for Najaf, the place where every Shia Muslim dreams of being buried.

Once in the capital, the checkpoints multiply as we approach the main centre of the Mandaeans in Qadisiyah neighbourhood on the western bank of the Tigris. Surrounded by concrete walls, the headquarters are protected by soldiers from the Ministry of Interior. Inside we meet Toma Zekhi, the local Mandaean head.

“It is not only religious persecution,” he explains. Traditionally, the Mandaeans have been goldsmiths and silversmiths, and this, during the last few years, has become a nightmare given the levels of criminality. An Amnesty International report of April 2010 corroborates Zekhi’s words, describing the dangers inflicted on Mandaean jewellers in post-Saddam Iraq.

Zekhi chose to stay, but many of his fellow believers fled after receiving ‘convert or die’ letters, also recurrent among the decimated local Christian population. Although attacks have decreased in the last three years, the road to harmony and coexistence among the peoples of Iraq is still full of obstacles.

“Religion and ethnicity go hand in hand Iraq and, unfortunately, that is also reflected in the Constitution,” says Saad Salloum, university professor and editor of Masarat, the only magazine on the minorities issue in Iraq, from his office in Baghdad.

“The Mandaeans are often included in the sub-group of ‘Christians and other ethnic groups’, so they lack certain privileges such as quotas of representation in Parliament and local councils.”

Not far away from there, Hassam Sapty Zaroon runs a small shop in Karrada neighbourhood southeast of Baghdad. He is carefully engraving a silver medallion with a bee, a lion, a scorpion and a snake around them. It is the amulet which, in Mandaean tradition, protects against evil.

During a break, Zaroon proudly produces a yellowed old document – a thank you letter addressed to his grandfather and signed by Winston Churchill to acknowledge the present of a cigar box engraved in silver with the profile of the British prime minister.

“Ours is a family tradition that goes back 400 years. We are all goldsmiths and silversmiths,” says Zaroon, the last of an illustrious line of craftsmen.

The artisan is using exactly the same tools as his grandfather, but Hassam Sapty stopped looking wistfully at the Tigris since he converted to Islam several years ago.

Even if urgent measures are enforced, his traditional Mandaean motifs engraved in black silver might soon be among the last vestiges left of an ancient culture about to wither away forever.

Hundreds of protesters, dozens outfitted in orange jumpsuits and black hoods, took to the streets outside the White House on Wednesday to demonstrate against torture and indefinite detention on the 10th anniversary of the opening of the U.S. prison facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Outside the White House, protesters withstood rain and cold to decry what they labeled a bipartisan assault on human rights. Credit: Charles Davis

Yet despite pledging to shutter the facility, President Barack Obama has instead institutionalised the practice of indefinite detention, his administration asserting the right to detain at least 48 of the remaining 171 men at Guantánamo indefinitely without so much as a military tribunal, declaring them too dangerous to be released even as it concedes it lacks sufficient evidence to try them. Though more than half of those housed at the prison have been approved for transfer or release, the last two to actually leave did so in body bags.

And at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, around 2,600 men are currently imprisoned without charge, with human rights groups reporting they are subjected to Guantánamo-like conditions such as routine sensory and sleep deprivation and other techniques condemned as tantamount to torture.

Rather than push back against this expansion of indefinite detention, lawmakers in Congress have instead codified it, passing a bill, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which allows the military to imprison without charge for the duration of the war on terror anyone accused of a terrorism-related offence, including U.S. citizens.

Nonetheless, the Obama administration has maintained that Congress is to blame for the fact the Guantánamo detention facility remains open three years after the president issued an executive order declaring his intention to close it. In late 2010, congressional Republicans and conservative Democrats successfully passed a measure blocking the White House from spending any funds transferring prisoners at Guantánamo to facilities in the United States.

But Ramzi Kassem, a professor of law at the City University of New York who represents seven men detained at Guantánamo, told IPS there is plenty of blame to go around.

“I think Congress shoulders a share of the responsibility, but it’s also the president’s fault,” Kassem said. “There are many things he could have done to close Guantánamo, so to the extent it’s still open it’s very much a self-inflicted wound on the president’s part.”

Guantánamo is also only a place, Kassem added. More troubling are the legal principles it represents – principles that have been embraced wholeheartedly by the president.

“His legal position as to Bagram is indistinguishable from the Bush administration’s position as Guantanamo,” he said, “namely that there is no (legal) jurisdiction – Obama administration lawyers are going to court these days to say that.”

Human rights groups agree. “The men indefinitely detained at Guantánamo have been abandoned by all three branches of government,” the Center for Constitutional Rights declared in a Jan. 11 statement, “but the primary responsibility for the prison remaining open lies with President Obama.”

Rather than deliver its promise of a “new era of accountability and respect for the rule of law”, the group noted the Obama administration has also “repeatedly acted to block virtually any accountability for those who have planned, authorized, and committed torture at Guantánamo and beyond.”

Amnesty International also issued a statement decrying the prison’s “toxic legacy”, while Human Rights Watch sent a letter to President Obama criticising his embrace of indefinite detention and urging him to reaffirm his commitment to closing Guantánamo.

A group of prominent attorneys and retired military officials – including Admiral John D. Huston and Lawrence Wilkerson, the former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell – likewise called on Congress and the Obama administration to close a facility they said undermines the rule of law and acts as a recruiting tool for terrorists.

Outside the White House, meanwhile, protesters withstood rain and cold to decry what they labeled a bipartisan assault on human rights, with over 60 protesters outfitted in Guantánamo’s trademark orange jumpsuits and black hoods encircling the White House to demand the facility be shuttered.

More than 50 protesters also took part in a 10-day hunger strike and deployed a make-shift prison cell in front of the White House to highlight their opposition to what activist Beth Brockman termed the Obama administration-supported, Congress-approved “architecture of torture, abuse and indefinite detention”.

Among those joining the protest was Morris Davis, the former chief military prosecutor at Guantánamo from September 2005 until 2007, who resigned after objecting to the use of evidence gained through torture. He said the prison’s continued operation was an indictment of the U.S. government as a whole.

“Congress has failed us, the president has failed us,” Davis told the crowd. “It’s up to the people to demand our government do the right thing.”

The recent escalation in Iranian threats to blockade oil shipments and attack U.S. Navy vessels are meant to push up the price of oil and divert domestic opinion from an economic crisis but are not likely to lead to a war in the Persian Gulf, in the view of Iran experts.

The amphibious assault ship USS Bataan transits the Strait of Hormuz in October 2011. Credit: U.S. Navy photo

Should Iran retaliate for impending new sanctions against its oil exports, it is more apt to target oil production in its neighbour, Iraq, than foreign tankers in the Gulf.

“We’ve seen this movie before,” Cliff Kupchan, an Iran analyst at the Eurasia Group, told IPS on Wednesday, referring to Iran’s defiant rhetoric and firm U.S. response. “Neither side wants a war. A lot of this rhetoric is overstated.”

While there is always a chance for miscalculation in the crowded waters of the Gulf, a clash of words is more useful to Tehran than actual hostilities.

On Tuesday, after Iranian armed forces commander Gen. Ataollah Salehi warned that a U.S. aircraft carrier that left the Gulf last week should not return, the price of oil jumped four percent.

The United States has also benefited from the tensions, recently concluding deals to sell Saudi Arabia 30 billion dollars in advanced weaponry and 3.5 billion dollars in arms to the United Arab Emirates.

Despite threats last week to close the Strait of Hormuz, the choke point between Iran and Oman for much of the world’s tanker-borne oil, Iran is not in a position to keep the waterway closed.

During the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, Iran used mines and small boats to attack 190 ships from 31 nations, killing at least 63 sailors, according to David Crist, who wrote a history of naval encounters in the Gulf for The Washington Institute for Near East Policy in 2009. However, the U.S. and allied navies kept the Gulf open for tanker traffic and Iran suffered significant losses, including three warships, two oil platforms and a number of boats.

The U.S. is now much better equipped to deal with the threat from Iranian mines, Crist wrote, with four counter-mine ships based in Bahrain and superior surveillance.

While Iran now has more advanced anti-ship missiles and three Russian submarines, Kupchan dismissed Iranian naval power in the Gulf as “puny”.

Should Iran provoke a clash, Iran hawks in the U.S. have suggested that the U.S. military take the opportunity not just to hit Iranian naval assets, but to go after its nuclear installations as well. While the Barack Obama administration has given no indication that it would do so, Kupchan said Iran would be unlikely to jeopardise its “crown jewels”.

Iran would presumably seek to continue its own oil exports through the Gulf and target the ships of Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. However, that would undermine Iran’s relations with China, a major importer of oil from Saudi Arabia as well as Iran. China is also Iran’s number one trading partner and has provided Iran with key political support, threatening to use its veto power to prevent new sanctions against Iran by the U.N. Security Council.

While the United States has repeatedly affirmed that it will keep the Gulf open to shipping, the Obama administration is not eager for a new conflict in the Middle East at a time when it is trying to cut the defence budget and the president is running for re-election.

However, the administration has not sought to take advantage of the growing squeeze on Iran to advance a diplomatic solution of the dispute over Iran’s nuclear programme.

Iranian press reports say that Tehran is seeking a new round of nuclear negotiations with the U.S. and the other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany this month. However, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Tuesday that Iran had yet to put the request in writing.

U.S. officials have barely mentioned diplomacy as an option with Iran in recent months following a brief attempt at engagement in Obama’s first year. Instead the focus is almost entirely on sanctions.

Nuland told reporters Tuesday that the Obama administration sees new “threats from Tehran as just increasing evidence that the international pressure is beginning to bite there, and that they are feeling increasingly isolated and they are trying to divert the attention of their own public from the difficulties inside Iran, including the economic difficulties as a result of the sanctions.”

The Iranian warnings have coincided with a precipitous drop in the Iranian currency, the rial. Worth 10,000 to the dollar a year ago, the rial is now hovering between 16,000 and 18,000.

Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, an expert on the Iranian economy at Virginia Tech, told IPS that the biggest victim of the drop was the Iranian middle class. He said that at one point on Monday, “there were no dollars to be bought” from currency traders in Tehran.

While the Iranian government still has substantial reserves in gold and hard currency, Salehi said there is a severe shortage of paper dollars in the country exacerbated by the growing difficulty of carrying out foreign banking transactions. Small factory owners desperate to keep their enterprises running and dependent on imports of intermediate goods are bidding up the price of the dollar in a panicky fashion, he said.

Others impacted by the currency drop include the parents of students studying abroad.

“There are half a million kids abroad,” he said. “They need dollars to pay tuition and rent.”

The crisis comes at a politically sensitive time for the Iranian regime. Parliamentary elections are scheduled for Mar. 2 and the government fears that a low turnout will further undermine its legitimacy, already blackened in the wake of disputed 2009 presidential elections and a harsh crackdown on dissent.

The rial plunge appeared to be in part a reaction to an anticipated European embargo on Iranian oil. European Union members decided in principle Wednesday to halt imports that have averaged about 450,000 barrels a day.

The Europeans, who are expected to finalise the decision by the end of this month, are responding to a new U.S. law, signed by President Barack Obama on New Year’s Eve, that forbids foreign banks that deal with Iran’s Central Bank from transactions with U.S. banks. The law, which was attached to a defense authorisation bill, provides several months for the sanctions to go into effect and allows Obama to waive the penalties if they will result in major disruptions in the world oil market.

Kupchan suggested that Iran might retaliate by sabotaging Iraqi oil production, taking advantage of chaos in that country since a U.S. military withdrawal and seeking to trigger the market disruption outlined in the new U.S. sanctions bill.

“If you want to undermine the legislation, the easiest oil to take off line is Iraq,” he said.

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Jan 2 2012 (IPS)

The so-called “Arab Spring” led U.S. network television evening news coverage during 2011, comprising a total of about 10 percent of all the news coverage provided by the three major commercial networks during 2011, according to the latest annual review by the authoritative Tyndall Report.

Tripoli residents celebrate Eid, and political victory. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

Indeed, the two top stories – of both foreign and domestic news – for the three networks during the year included the NATO-backed uprising in Libya and the killing of its long-time leader Col. Moammar Gaddafi, and the ouster of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and its aftermath.

The Libya story garnered a combined total of nearly 700 minutes of network coverage – or roughly five percent of total coverage – on the evening news programmes of ABC, CBS and NBC, while events in Egypt received nearly 500 minutes.

Much less time, however, was devoted to the uprisings in Syria (143 minutes), Bahrain (34 minutes), and Yemen (29 minutes), as well as to general overviews of what some experts have called the “Arab Awakening” (42 minutes) that has been roiling the countries of North Africa and the Middle East since last winter.

“Normally, the networks rev up foreign coverage only when the U.S. is embroiled in military action abroad,” noted the report‘s founder and editor, Andrew Tyndall. “But this year, they provided more international news in which the U.S. troops were not directly involved on the ground than in any other since 1991.”

While U.S. airpower was used as part of the NATO campaign to oust Gaddafi, no U.S. ground troops were deployed to Libya.

“Simply put, the type of foreign policy that attracts the most attention is war – the use of military force. Diplomacy is much less newsworthy and leaves room for more of the international angle in covering global hotspots,” he told IPS in an email exchange.

The two wars in which Washington had troops on the ground during 2011 – Afghanistan and Iraq – did not receive nearly the amount of coverage on the three networks as Libya and Egypt. The conflict in Afghanistan, which ranked eighth among all news stories, received 224 minutes of coverage, or less than half that given to Egypt. Iraq, from which the U.S. withdrew all its remaining combat forces last month, garnered a scant 71 minutes during the year.

The killing by U.S. Navy Seals of Osama bin Laden last May in Pakistan received 179 minutes of coverage, making it the ninth most- covered news story of the year, right behind Afghanistan.

Surveys by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press among other polling and research groups show that about two-thirds of the general public cite television as their main source for national and international news, more than twice the number of people who rely on newspapers, and about 50 percent more than the growing number of U.S. residents who rely on the internet (43 percent).

While Fox News, CNN and MSNBC are widely recognised as major news sources, the 30-minute evening network news programmes enjoy roughly seven times the viewership of the cable channels. For many U.S. residents, the network news programmes offer virtually their only window to the world outside the United States.

The evening news programmes average about 22 minutes each. The report, which has used a consistent methodology for more than two decades, tapes these programmes during the five weekdays (Monday through Friday) over the year and, among other things, tallies the number of minutes that each programme devoted to the hundreds of news events covered over that period. Altogether, the three networks broadcast nearly 15,000 minutes of news coverage during the year.

The total time the three networks devoted to international coverage – not including Washington-based U.S. foreign policy coverage – in 2011 came to 3105 minutes, or a little more than 20 percent of all news coverage. That was about 250 minutes more than the average annual total between 1988 and 2010.

Of 2011’s 20 top stories, eight involved foreign countries: besides Libya (1), Egypt (2), Afghanistan (8), and bin Laden’s killing (9), the Japanese earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear breakdown ranked fourth with 389 minutes, while the British royal wedding took 11th place, ahead of Syria (14), and the London tabloids hacking scandal (20).

The ongoing partisan battles over the federal deficit and the debt ceiling ranked third among all stories at 477 minutes, while persistent unemployment ranked seventh (263 minutes) and the Occupy Wall Street protests (111 mins) gained the 18th spot. If combined, however, those three economics-related stories would have eclipsed Libya as the year’s top story.

Other stories in the top 20 included the Arizona shooting of a U.S. congresswoman (fifth ranked at 368 minutes), stock market fluctuations (13th, 153 mins), the football rape scandal at Pennsylvania State University (15th, 142 mins), and the trial of the late Michael Jackson’s doctor (19th, 106 minutes).

In addition, four major weather stories ranked among the top 20, including the tornado season (6th, 358 mins), Hurricane Irene’s impact on the U.S. Northeast (10th, 178 mins), harsh winter weather across the country (12th, 165 mins), and last spring’s Mississippi River floods (16th, 129 mins). Combined, the weather stories would have exceeded 830 minutes, or about seven percent of total news coverage.

While a growing number of climatologists have argued that extreme weather of the kind covered by the media may well be a symptom of global warming, the news programmes, as in recent past years, made little or no attempt to point that out, according to Tyndall.

“It is safe to say that the network news is complicit in this country’s global warming denialism, reinforcing the problem, as opposed to reporting on it,” he told IPS.

Besides global warming, Tyndall pointed out other major international stories neglected by the networks included the looming threat of the Eurozone’s collapse and the possibility of a second global financial crisis, as well as China’s continuing rise and increased assertiveness, particularly along its maritime borders.

What appears well on the way to becoming a major international story in 2012, the growing tensions over Iran’s nuclear programme, received less than 20 minutes of the networks’ attention last year.

Besides the Arab Awakening, Japan’s disasters, Afghanistan, bin Laden, and the British royal wedding, the leading international stories included famine in the Horn of Africa (87 mins); Iraq and the scandal surrounding the alleged sexual assault by former International Monetary Fund (IMF) director Dominique Strauss-Kahn (71 mins each); and ongoing efforts to hunt down other Al-Qaeda leaders (46 mins).

Coverage also featured U.S.-Pakistan relations and Greek politics and protests (39 mins each); the mass murder in Norway, and Bahrain (34 mins each); the death of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il (34 mins each); the murder trial and appeal of a U.S. student in Italy (30 mins); Yemen (29 mins); London youth riots (26 mins); the Israel- Palestinian conflict (25 mins); the fall and replacement of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi (24 mins); and the Palestinian drive for U.N. recognition (23 mins).

Tyndall said that both NBC and CBS broke 20-year-old records in the amount of foreign news coverage they provided, substantially more than ABC, which lagged far behind its two competitors on virtually every major overseas story except the British royal wedding.

The two networks showed “less and less resistance to using cheap, mobile, non-professional news-gathering tactics and sources,” such as cell phones, Twitter, and Skype, over the years.

“This means that one of the major past obstacles to global stories appearing on the news agenda – the relatively high logistical cost – is being removed,” he noted.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

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