Archive | Iraq

Wahhabi Terrorist Puts Bomb in a Copy of the Holy Quran on Iraqi Street

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Over 400 Killed in a Week of Iraqi Violence

NOVANEWS

Is Sectarian Civil War Up and Running Again?

After a massive series of sectarian bombings killed 133 people on Monday, more bombings hit Tuesday, killing scores of additional people. They cap a solid week of fighting that has seen more than 400 people killed and many hundreds more wounded.

The month of April had sparked major concerns about the rise of sectarian violence in Iraq, with a death toll the highest it had been since Summer 2008. The overall toll was 460, for the entire month, meaning May is set to blow past it dramatically.

Summer of 2008 was the period when the last sectarian civil war was winding down, and the Maliki government has been downplaying the significance of the recent attacks and insisting it has things in control. Still, the sheer number of deaths suggests that the next sectarian war may no longer be “coming,” it may have already arrived.

Sectarian tensions have been on the rise for many months, and spillover from the civil war in Syria has been adding fuel to that fire. As the military moved to crack down on Sunni Arab protesters in April, however, Iraq has simply exploded again.

Since then it is clear the Maliki government has had no real answer. Threats of further military operations are the order of the day, and a number of TV stations in Sunni areas were shut down for being unfriendly to the government. This of course is just fueling anger among Sunnis who already believed they were being persecuted, and is making it easier for militants to recruit.

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Iraqi ambassador to Jordan ignites fight over anti-Saddam remarks

NOVANEWS
Jordanian supporters of ex-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein physically battling it out with Iraqis who oppose the strongman’s rule in the Iraqi embassy in Amman. (YouTube screen grab) 
Zionist Al Arabiya -

A statement by the Iraqi ambassador to Jordan, which denounced the brutal regime of Saddam Hussein, ignited a fight between both supporters and opponents of the former Iraqi leader.

In a YouTube video published on Sunday, mostly Jordanian supporters of Saddam and Iraqi opponents physically kicked each other and threw chairs at one another during an event that had been organized by the Iraqi embassy in Amman.

After the Iraqi Ambassador, Hadi Jawad, criticized Saddam’s 24-year rule, some of the Jordanian attendees questioned him, describing the rule of Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki as nothing better especially due to the fact that deadly violence continues in Iraq.

Just before the physical hostilities, the toppled strongman’s Jordanian supporters at the event were heard chanting “with blood and spirit we will redeem you, oh Saddam!”

The aggression came to an end after security guards stormed the hall.

In March 2003, the U.S. invasion of Iraq brought an end to Saddam’s hold on power and his one-arty Baathist rule in the country.

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Iraq still uses phony bomb detectors

NOVANEWS
A policeman in Baghdad knows the bomb detector he uses is fake, and will do vir tually nothing to save anyone’s life, but he has his orders.
“If I were given a mop and told that it detects bombs in cars, I would still do it without any hesitation,” he told AFP, asking not to be identified.
“The device is a 100 percent failure and we know that, but it is imposed on us; we cannot disobey direct orders,” he added.
James McCormick, a British businessman, made an estimated $ 240 million selling the “bomb detectors,” based on a novelty golf ball finder, to Iraq and other countries.
He was sentenced to 10 years in jail for fraud. But despite the sentencing and overwhelming evidence that the devices are worthless, the I raqi government has not taken them out of circulation.
Relying on bomb detectors that do not work is an especially grave issue in Iraq, where violence is a major problem and bombings by militants are common.
The latest fighting in northern Iraq killed nine police, while a car bomb targeting worshipers near a Sunni mosque north of Baghdad left five dead, security and medical officials said.
The fighting between police and armed men in west Mosul, including mortar rounds fired at checkpoints, killed nine police and wounded seven, police and a doctor said.
Four gunmen were also killed in the clashes. In Rashidiyah, north of Baghdad, the car bomb exploded as worshippers left Friday prayers at Al Ghufran mosque, killing at least five people and wounding 30, an interior ministry official and a medical source said.
And in Al Amil in south Baghdad, a magnetic “sticky bomb” blast wounded a police captain, while a roadside explosion wounded three more police in Taji, north of the capital, the ministry official and medical sources said.
Most Iraqis familiar with the fake devices, made of black plastic with a pistol-style grip and a small silver antenna, do not have any regard for them. Army Captain Saleh Mohammed said security forces do not trust the devices.
“The soldier holding the device is himself not confident in it, but it is imposed on him,” Mohammed said.
“We already told the officials that the device is not working properly but they wanted to show the people that they did something,” he said.
Mohammed also had sharp words for Britain for allowing the devices to be exported in the first place. “The British government must be held responsible for all the explosions that happened,” Mohammed said.
It “is an advanced country and has quality control and good customer service standards,” he said, asking how officials there could have not known the “detectors” were being marketed.
“Don’t they know that these devices do not work as they examined them? Didn’t they take taxes for exporting them?” British firm Advanced Tactical Security & Communications Ltd.
(ATSC) made a number of fantastical claims about the devices.
It said they could pick up substances ranging from explosives to ivory at up to 1,000 meters on the ground or 3,000 meters from the air, using credit card-sized “sensor cards.”
The reality, however, proved rather different, with McCormick found guilty of three counts of fraud.

 

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IRAQI BIRTH DEFECTS WORSE THAN HIROSHIMA

NOVANEWS
(warning: graphic images)
The United States may be finished dropping bombs on Iraq, but Iraqi bodies will be dealing with the consequences for generations to come in the form of birth defects, mysterious illnesses and skyrocketing cancer rates.
Al Jazeera’s Dahr Jamail reports that contamination from U.S. weapons, particularly Depleted Uranium (DU) munitions, has led to an Iraqi health crisis of epic proportions. “[C]hildren being born with two heads, children born with only one eye, multiple tumours, disfiguring facial and body deformities, and complex nervous system problems,” are just some of the congenital birth defects being linked to military-related pollution.
In certain Iraqi cities, the health consequences are significantly worse than those seen in the aftermath of the atomic bombing of Japan at the end of WWII.
The highest rates are in the city of Fallujah, which underwent two massive US bombing campaigns in 2004. Though the U.S. initially denied it, officials later admitted using white phosphorous. In addition, U.S. and British forces unleashed an estimated 2,000 tons of depleted uranium ammunitions in populated Iraqi cities in 2003.
DU, a chemically toxic heavy metal produced in nuclear waste, is used in weapons due to its ability to pierce through armor. That’s why the US and UK were among a handful of nations (France and Israel) who in December refused to sign an international agreement to limit its use, insisting DU is not harmful, science be damned. Meanwhile, the Pentagon’s refusal to release details about where DU munitions were fired has made it difficult to clean up.
Today, 14.7 percent of Fallujah’s babies are born with a birth defect, 14 times the documented rate in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Fallujah’s babies have also experienced heart defects 13 times the European rate and nervous system defects 33 times that of Europe. That comes on top of a 12-fold rise in childhood cancer rates since 2004. Furthermore, the male-to-female birth ratio is now 86 boys for every 100 girls, indicating genetic damage that affects males more than females.
(On a side note, these pictures are rather sanitized compared to other even more difficult to look at images. See here if you can bear it.)
If Fallujah is the Iraqi Hiroshima, then Basra is its Nagasaki.
According to a study published in the Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology, a professional journal based in the southwestern German city of Heidelberg, there was a sevenfold increase in the number of birth defects in Basra between 1994 and 2003.
According to the Heidelberg study, the concentration of lead in the milk teeth of sick children from Basra was almost three times as high as comparable values in areas where there was no fighting.
In addition, never before has such a high rate of neural tube defects (“open back”) been recorded in babies as in Basra, and the rate continues to rise. According to the study, the number of hydrocephalus (“water on the brain”) cases among new-borns is six times as high in Basra as it is in the United States.
This isn’t isolated to Fallujah and Basra. The overall Iraqi cancer rate has also skyrocketed:
Official Iraqi government statistics show that, prior to the outbreak of the First Gulf War in 1991, the rate of cancer cases in Iraq was 40 out of 100,000 people. By 1995, it had increased to 800 out of 100,000 people, and, by 2005, it had doubled to at least 1,600 out of 100,000 people. Current estimates show the increasing trend continuing.
As Grist’s Susie Cagle points out, “That’s potentially a more than 4,000 percent increase in the cancer rate, making it more than 500 percent higher than the cancer rate in the U.S.
Dr. Mozghan Savabieasfahani, an environmental toxicologist based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, told Jamail that “These observations collectively suggest an extraordinary public health emergency in Iraq. Such a crisis requires urgent multifaceted international action to prevent further damage to public health.”
Instead, the international community, including the nation most responsible for the health crisis (hint: it starts with a “U” and ends with an “S”), is mostly ignoring the problem.
To make matters worse, Iraq’s healthcare system, which was once the envy of the region, is virtually nonexistent due to the mass exodus of Iraq’s medical doctors since 2003. According to recent estimates, there are currently fewer than 100 psychiatrists and 20,0000 physicians serving a population of 31 million Iraqis.
Dahr Jamail was on Democracy Now this morning discussing the horrific effects of military-related pollution in Iraq:
Yanar Mohammad, President of the Organization for Women’s Freedom in Iraq was also on Democracy Now and addressed the toxic legacy of birth defects in Iraq.

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Hawija: War Crimes, Iraqi Resistance and America’s Weapons of Mass Destruction

NOVANEWS
Global Research

The parliamentary investigative committee in the Hawija massacre, that left more than 50 peaceful protesters dead, revealed on Tuesday 30 April that 90% of the victims of the Iraqi SWAT team raid were shot in the head, abdomen and chest. Some protesters were shot while their hands were tied behind their backs. The report affirms that the protest area was free of weapons. This confirms the claim made by the demonstration organizers, who assured the peaceful nature of the protest and vehemently denied possessing weapons or inciting violence.

Chairman of the Iraqi Parliamentary Human Rights Commission, MP Salim Al-Jabouri, revealed that “senior Iraqi military officers” were involved in the Hawija army raid. He claimed that these officers had “issued kill orders” to soldiers. “The issue does not stop at an army raid, but it goes beyond this to include executions and murder; while some of the wounded were specifically targeted. This represents a crime against humanity,” he added.

Minister of Industry & Minerals Ahmad NasirDilli al-Karbuli, Education Minister Muhammad Tamim, and Minister of Science & Technology Abd al-Karim al-Samarrairesigned as a reaction to the incidents.

“We are staying restrained so far, but if government forces keep targeting us, no one can know what will happen in the future, and things could spin out of control,” said Abdul Aziz al-Faris, a tribal leader in Hawija.

A Western diplomat, who was not authorized to speak publicly and agreed to talk only on condition of anonymity, said: “Bottom line, it looks like excessive force was used and a lot of unarmed people were killed. There were more people killed than there were arms”.

The Global Forum for Islamic Parliamentarians (GFIP) expressed deep regret for the shocking massacre of Hawija town in Iraq. In a press statement on 24 April, the GFIP said: “The violent raid is a flagrant violation of the United Nations Charter and all international norms and conventions on human rights.

On 25 April, ICRC staff managed to reach the town of Hawija to assess the situation and deliver medical assistance to the local health-care facility. “In many villages along the road we saw funerals taking place and at the hospital, some of the wounded were still receiving treatment,” said AnisGandeel, the ICRC delegate who led the mission.

Officials have tried the usual downplaying of the violence, coupled with blaming the media. Iraqi authoritiess uspended the operating licenses of pan-Arab broadcaster Al Jazeera and nine Iraqi TV channels on Sunday after accusing them of escalating sectarian tension. While it is Maliki’s virulent sectarian policies that have alienated the Iraqi people and made them revolt. Since 25 December peaceful protestors have been demanding that their basic rights be respected. Hundreds of thousands have been locked up for years, many without charges, in prisons run by sectarian militias. More than 1,400 people face execution. The authoritiesled by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki have responded to these peaceful demonstrations with the use of threats and violence on many occasions, in Ramadi, Baquba and other places.

The Guardian reported on 18 April that

“Troops backed by helicopters are searching for Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, head of Saddam’s now outlawed Ba’ath party, in villages around the former ruler’s home town of Tikrit. (…) Security officers involved in the Douri operation said they believed he moved between Tikrit and the towns of Dour and Hawija.”

Could that have been the reason why this particular protest site came under attack? Maybe, but there are more important reasons for the deadly raid in Hawija.

Hawija is not just another Iraqi town. It has been one of the most rebellious towns in Iraq. It has paid a heavy price for fiercely resisting the occupation since 2003. And now its children are slowly dying.

US forces used WMD that kill children in Hawija

In late August 2011, The Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI) released a damning exposé about major environmental and human harm being caused by a US military base in the Iraqi town of Hawija

Their report, entitled U.S. Army Base Transforms the Town of Hawija into a Crisis Zone: Hundreds of Paralyzed Children and Teenagers with Cancer, describes how

“in a town of 109,000 people there is a generation of children who are suffering from Poliomyelitis paralysis and cases of brain damage or atrophy. 412 of these children and teenagers are registered patients in the health clinic, whereas the actual numbers exceed 600 cases of child disability. Cancer is also spreading like an epidemic among all age groups but especially among teenagers, who await their death as the Iraqi and U.S. governments make no efforts to provide treatment or medication. The U.S. government is responsible for the radiation and the unleashing of their arsenal to practice with live ammunition and explosives in a field that was merely one and a half km away from a residential neighbourhood and with no wall or a fence to prevent civilians, children, and shepherds from entering.”

The report, that went unnoticed by the mainstream media, found that Hawija and the surrounding villages in this district have become a backyard dump polluted with radiation and leftover munitions from a U.S. Army base, a fact that has caused a human tragedy denied to this day by the Iraqi and American governments. Moreover, the two governments work hard to ensure that the issue remains top secret, despite the daily tragedies borne by the residents of the area.

Evan Al-Darraji wrote in her article: “Multiple Methods, One Murder”

“The strange thing is that the U.S. continues to claim that its war on Iraq was ‘clean’!! Can you call a brutal war that has caused murder, destruction, and displacement ‘clean’? They deny it, despite all the evidence against them, a fact that only reveals their lies and violations of international treaties and protocols such as the Geneva Protocol of 1925 that prohibits the use of bacteriological methods of warfare, in addition to asphyxiating and poisonous gases, among other weapons. It was signed by twenty-nine countries, yet the United States was conspicuously opposed to it. Moreover, in December 1966, the United Nations General Assembly issued a resolution that dictated the need to adhere strictly to the aforementioned protocol. During the 1960s, Britain made the effort to disarm its biological weapons and received broad support for these efforts, especially from the Soviet Union. Likewise, in 1969 former President of the United States Richard Nixon announced the country’s disapproval of the use of biological weapons, and ordered the destruction of the country’s reserves.

The UN General Assembly also referred to its resolution number 2662 (25th session) that was made on December 7th, 1970, to take the necessary steps to remove the weapons of mass destruction such as those that use chemical and bacteriological (biological) factors from the military munitions of all countries.

What is the meaning of these treaties and resolutions? Are they mere clichés and embellishments to be added to their ‘human rights’ counterparts that are being violated in Iraq in every way? Who is responsible for demanding our most basic rights and for holding accountable those who violate it? Where is the government, and what position does it assume in defending the lives, health, and future of the citizens of Iraq in the face of multiple levels of humanitarian crises?

Whom do we hold accountable? To whom do we raise our grievances?”

FalahAlwan of the Federation of Workers Councils and Unions in Iraqwrote apiecefor GlobalResearch about the report. Alwan writes: “There are hundreds of people with illnesses, including cancer. People cannot afford proper medical treatment; FWCUI and OWFI are demanding that the weapons testing stops, that the site is cleaned up and that people are given access to the medical treatment they need.”

Hawija, a story of resistance

Hawija is a town near Kirkuk north of Baghdad. Hawija is in the Kerkuk province of Iraq and approximately 30 miles south of Kirkuk. There are approximately 450,000 people in and around Hawija. The city itself has about 150,000 inhabitants.

During the occupation U.S. and Iraqi forces have experienced numerous lethal attacks in the area from the resistance. As of March 2006, the area of Hawija was considered one of the most dangerous in all of Iraq with US soldiers and the foreign press corps in Baghdad dubbing Hawija “Anbar of the North”.

US Army under constant attack

The closest US Forward Operation Base (FOB) to Hawija is FOB McHenry. FOB McHenry was established in 2003 by Alpha Company 1-12 infantry who had been operating out of an abandoned school in the town of Hawija. As of May 2005 FOB McHenry was home to around 500 US soldiers. In March 2006, Soldiers in 1st Battalion 327th infantry regiment at FOB McHenry were finding 3 to 5 roadside bombs a day. From November 1, 2005 through March 2006 medics treated 120 trauma cases. Nine members of the brigade as of March 2006 have died in combat in Hawijah proper, most from a single company, C Co. 1-327th Inf, call sign ‘Cold Steel.’

The battalion that replaced 1st Battalion 327th infantry regiment in August 2006 was the 2-27 wolfhounds from the 3rd BDE, 25th ID. During their 15 months at FOB McHenry, they experienced one of the deadliest periods of the war. Over 15 months, of the estimated 250 to 300 soldiers that were regularly going outside the wire on missions, 18 were killed in action. The deadliest day was on 6 December 2006. Five soldiers were killed when a surface to air missile was modified into an IED, destroying the Humvee and killing everyone inside.

A lot of US military operations have targeted the city of Hawija. The first was Operation Bayonet Lightning, a military operation during the early stages of the Iraq War, that was held to capture weapons, materials, and people that “posed a threat” against coalition forces. The joint operation between Iraq and the United States, lasted approximately 16 hours, and was conducted on 2 December 2003. 1,200 soldiers from the 173rd Airborne Brigade, the 4th Infantry Division, and Iraqi military participated. Operation Bayonet Lightning was concentrated on Hawija.

Several other military campaigns against Hawija followed, but that didn’t discourage the resistance.

It is impossible to find out how many Iraqis have been killed in Hawija between 2003 and 2013. No journalist, no soldier has mentioned civilian casualties in this city, but we can assume that many Hawijans have lost their lives during this period.

Embedded journalists report

In an article from 8 July 2006, titled: How Do You Solve a Problem Like Hawija?, embedded reporter Shelby Monroe writes:

“Not far from Kirkuk is the town of Hawija. Hawija gives the appearance of a more peaceful existence. It is an area of farmland, full of greenery in spite of months without rain. Rows of sunflowers border plots of land. The sheep have fields to graze in, unlike the sheep in Kirkuk that have to settle for whatever food can be found in the garbage that litters the streets. It is possible to imagine a life of tranquil simplicity among the irrigated fields and flowers, but nothing is simple in Iraq. Though more soldiers serve in Kirkuk, more soldiers have died in Hawija.

Major Victor Vasquez describes Kirkuk as similar to the Chicago of the 1920s, and Hawija is the Wild West. According to Major Kelly Kendrick, the majority of attacks against our soldiers in Hawija are perpetrated by people who are resistant to our presence, but who are not part of an organized terrorist network. “We are trying to take away power from those who abuse it, and they do not want to go down without a fight.

To the soldier on patrol, an IED is an IED, and whether or not the people who target us consider themselves members of an organized effort or not, they are all capable of brutal acts. When a convoy drives through downtown Hawija, thoughts turn to grenades. The slow pace of the traffic through the narrow streets becomes nerve-wracking. Although the local population conducts business as usual, it would be unwise for the soldiers to stop and talk, making it difficult to change perceptions, let alone build relationships.”

On October 19, 2006, in his article Hawija: A small city with big problems , Ben Murray writes:

“This city isn’t on a lot maps of Iraq. Small and somewhat isolated in the farmlands between Kirkuk and Beiji about 175 miles north of Baghdad, Hawija is a destitute sprawl of buildings ridden with the long litany of problems suffered by many towns in Iraq.

Home to about 40,000 people, it has no major industry to speak of or political significance, and its streets are laden with garbage and the evidence of repeated insurgent attacks.

As a small city near the Kurdish northern region of Iraq, it has the potential to be an unremarkable town. But whenever U.S. forces leave Forward Operating Base McHenry near the city, they drive directly into the teeth of an angry insurgency so violent that it killed five men in the first six weeks the Hawaii-based 2nd Battalion, 27th Infantry Regiment has spent here.

Unemployment is phenomenally high in the city, perhaps 80 percent, due in part to the disbanding of the old Iraqi army, said Col. Fatah Mahmoud Yaseen, Hawija’s police chief. Many in the city are former military members who lost their jobs when U.S. forces rolled north in 2003 and scattered the force.”

These two examples give an idea of the strong resistance the coalition forces and the Iraqi armed forces have encountered in Hawija since 2003.

So it doesn’t come as a surprise that Hawija was the first protest area that had to be “cleaned up” and destroyed by Maliki’s forces. Hawija was meant to set an example for the rest of the protest movements in other areas.

But the massive and peaceful demonstrations against the government continue across Iraq’s provinces without diminishing…they have been going on for over four months now, and the numbers reach the millions.

In a desperate attempt to stop the demonstrations Nouri al-Maliki has ordered military reinforcements and anti-riot forces to the province of Anbar. As a reaction, tribes in Al Anbar decided to set up armed units to protect the protestors.

It’s time to stop this bloodshed. Time for Maliki and the remnants of the American occupation to go.

Hold the warmongers accountable !

Meanwhile, American leaders still don’t accept responsibility for their destruction of Iraq.

“I am comfortable in the decision-making process. I think the removal of Saddam Hussein was the right decision for not only our own security but for giving people a chance to live in a free society,” former US president George W. Bush said.”As far as I’m concerned, the debate is over. I mean, I did what I did. And historians will ultimately judge those decisions.”

No Mr. Bush, the debate is far from over. The world community holds you accountable and will finally judge you for the crimes you have committed against the Iraqi people. Without accepting accountability there can be no justice.

Dirk Adriaensens is coordinator of SOS Iraq and member of the executive committee of the BRussells Tribunal. Between 1992 and 2003 he led several delegations to Iraq to observe the devastating effects of UN imposed sanctions. He was a member of the International Organizing Committee of the World Tribunal on Iraq (2003-2005). He is also co-coordinator of the Global Campaign Against the Assassination of Iraqi Academics. He is co-author of Rendez-Vous in Baghdad, EPO (1994), Cultural Cleansing in Iraq, Pluto Press, London (2010), Beyond Educide, Academia Press, Ghent (2012), and is a frequent contributor to Global Research, Truthout, The International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies and other media.

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10 Years After Invasion, US Depleted Uranium Continues to Devastate Iraq

NOVANEWS

US persistent refusal to release data hampering efforts to eradicate contamination

- Jacob Chamberlain, staff writer

A radioactive heavy metal found in weapons used by the U.S. military and other forces in the war on Iraq continues to plague the country as hundreds of sites are still contaminated and causing the spread of the radioactive substance, according to a new report by Netherlands peace group IKV Pax Christi.

Air strikes in Baghdad, March 21, 2003 (Reuters/Goran Tomasevic)Tens years after the invasion, the U.S. has done almost nothing to clean up the toxic legacy of the war and continues to deny the well-documented harms caused by the radioactive residue that remains.

The particular danger posed by depleted uranium (DU)—used in munitions to penetrate hard surfaces such as armored vehicles—was well know prior to the 2003 start of the war. Despite this and ignoring warnings against the continued use of DU munitions, the findings of the report show that both the U.S. and the U.K. used such weapons far more expansively in Iraq—targeting ordinary vehicles and buildings in highly populated civilian areas.

According to the report, In a State of Uncertainty: Impact and implications of the use of depleted uranium in Iraq, the US expended over 400 tonnes of DU ammunition in Iraq, both during the first Gulf War in the early 1990′s and the subsequent invasion in 2003. British forces, reportedly, used three tonnes.

Both the U.S. and the U.K. have failed to admit the widely reported adverse health affects of exposure to DU. However, as the report points out:

New and alarming reports of increased cancer rates and birth malformations emerged in the years after the official ending of the hostilities in Iraq, as well as amongst veterans of Coalition forces who were present during and after the fighting; which again pointed to the use of DU as the cause of these health problems.

In response to the report, a UK government spokeswoman told the Guardian, “While UK armed forces have not needed to use DU since 2003, it would be wrong to deny them the potential future use of a legitimate and effective capability.”

The US government has consistently denied confirmation of where it had fired DU weapons. The report, however, shows that between 300 and 365 contaminated sites have been reported by 2006, with likely many more.

“It is unclear exactly how many locations may still be contaminated, or the extent of the risks that civilians face,” said the report’s author, Wim Zwijnenburg.

The report states:

The exposure risks to civilians from the use of DU in populated areas have been compounded by the US’s persistent refusal to release the data that could have helped facilitate effective assessment and clearance work, providing that the Iraqi government had the capacity and finances to undertake it. Taken as a whole, these issues cast serious doubts over the legitimacy of the use of DU.

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Beyond Treason | Depleted Uranium & Anthrax Vaccines

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‘Worse Than Syria’? Civil War in Iraq ‘Has Already Started’

NOVANEWS

Though receiving little international attention, the situation is putting Iraq on verge of “total collapse”

by Jon Queally

“It is wrong to say [Iraq is] getting close to a civil war… The civil war has already started.”

That’s what one Iraqi politician tells the Independent’s Patrick Cockburn as the British foreign correspondent explores the undercurrents of growing violence and political conflict in the country still reeling and destabilized from more than a decade of war and an entire generation beset by Western sanctions, military intervention, and occupation.

If things in Iraq continue to deteriorate, the politician predicts the results “will be worse than Syria.”

April in Iraq was the most deadly month in more than five years and many Iraqi politicians inside the country and outside experts are now saying that its not a question of when a civil war will break out, but that the violence now being witnessed proves a civil war—in many ways—is already underway.

As Cockburn reports:

The situation has suddenly deteriorated since the killing of at least 36 Sunni Arab protesters at a sit-in in Hawijah on 23 April. An observer in Baghdad, who did not want to be named, said “ever since, Hawijah people are frightened of a return to the massacres of 2006.” She added that Sunni and Shia were avoiding going into each others’ areas. Signs of deteriorating security are everywhere. Al-Qa’ida showed its reach on Monday when five car bombs blew up in overwhelmingly Shia southern Iraq, leaving 21 dead. The Sunni fundamentalist group, which had a resurgence in 2012, is responsible for killing a majority of the almost 1,500 Iraqis who have died in political violence so far this year.

Its members are now able to roam freely in Anbar province where a year ago they were a secretive underground movement. In neighbouring Kirkuk, al-Qa’ida last week seized the town of Sulaiman Bec, shot the chief of police, stormed the police station and departed with their weapons after agreeing a truce with the Iraqi army.

Earlier this week, a report titled Mission Unaccomplished, released by the UK-based War Child, found that the situation inside Iraq was “one of the world’s most neglected” ongoing crises and warned that a “total collapse of the state” remained a distinct possibility if the situation did not improve.

But, if Cockburn’s reporting accurately reflects the dynamics inside Iraq, it appears that the situation is about to get dramatically worse, not better.

He spoke with one high-level official within the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in the north who described just how bad things have become, especially regarding the growing Sunni insurgency that is fueling a large amount of the recent violence.

“The western part of the country is caught up in an uprising against the government,” said Fuad Hussein, the chief of staff of the KRG President Massoud Barzani. “We don’t want to have a second Syria here and we are heading in that direction. The fire is very bad and we don’t have many firemen.”

And Cockburn expands on how the crisis in neighboring Syria is “cross-infecting” the tensions and violence inside Iraq, writing:

The two-year-old uprising of the Sunni in Syria encouraged their compatriots in Iraq, who share a common frontier, to start their own protests. These began last December and, until the army killed and injured scores of protesters at Hawijah, were largely peaceful.

The Iraqi Sunni drew strength from the fact that, while they are a minority in their own country, they are a majority in the region.

The revolts in the two countries are ever more running in parallel. Al-Qa’ida in Iraq last month announced that it had founded the al-Nusra Front, the most effective Syrian rebel military force, devoted half its budget to support it and sent experienced al-Qa’ida fighters to Syria as reinforcements.

When Syrian government soldiers fled into Iraq in March and were being repatriated to Syria, some 47 of them were ambushed and killed at Akashat close to the Syrian border. The rebels claim that the Shia-dominated Iraqi government is becoming a more active supporter of President Bashar al-Assad. Rebels reported last week that an Iraqi air force aircraft had bombed their forces at Deir Ez-Zhor in eastern Syria.

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With at Least 460 Dead in April, Deadliest Month in Iraq Since 2009

NOVANEWS

 

Ongoing surge in violence shows an Iraq still torn by US war.

 

by Jacob Chamberlain

At least 460 people died in sectarian and political violence in Iraq during the month of April, Agence France-Presse reports on Wednesday, documenting yet another surge in violence in a country still reeling from years of war and conflict brought on by the U.S. led invasion a decade ago.

The AFP figures were released on May 1, a day on which another 15 people were killed in a series of bomb blasts across Iraq, police and medics said—showing the upsurge in violence was sadly undeterred by the start of a new month.

The majority of April deaths occurred after April 23, “when security forces moved on Sunni anti-government protesters near the northern Sunni Arab town of Hawijah, sparking clashes that killed 53 people,”AFP reports. A massive Sunni protest movement has been growingsince late last year in opposition to Shi’ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who protesters say has been suppressing Sunni rights in favor of the country’s Shi’ite majority.

Other factors have been blamed for the upsurge in violence, such as the Syrian civil war, which has been commonly categorized as a conflict between Sunni rebels and the ruling regime of President Bashar al-Assad, a member of the Alawite offshoot of Shiite Islam—which some suggest has put a strain on Sunni/Shia relations in the region.

Figures from Iraq Body Count show that the number of Iraqi deaths in April was the highest monthly toll since 2009.

In addition to the dead, violence in April also wounded 1,219 people, according to the AFP figures.

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