AUGUST 2006

Update August 21:Iraqi Kids Imprisoned, U.S. Official Says
By UPI Wire
Aug 19, 2006

WASHINGTON, Aug. 19, 2006 (UPI) -- The U.S.-led coalition is ignoring innocent children being held and sometimes abused in Iraqi juvenile prisons, a State Department official says.

"These are not hardened criminals or terrorists," wrote Marshall Adame, an official with the National Coordination Team based out of Camp Victory in Iraq, in a personal detailed report he published on an Internet Web log.

He added there were reports of "physical and other abuse" in the prison, but the U.S.-led coalition considered the issue "not our urgent business."

Adame, a retired U.S. Marine who has two sons who served in Iraq, told The Washington Times he published his report, titled "Six Blunders we made in Iraq we can still fix," because he wanted it to be part of the public record.

The State Department had no immediate comment.

Copyright 2006 United Press International

Bitter times in Iraq's orange capital
Every Iraqi Knows
By DAVID FERRI-SMITH

Every Iraqi knows
there are lions in the desert.
And by now, every Iraqi knows
the American soldiers stalked Abeer like lions,
in a pack,
the leaders among them taking the first bites
of her fifteen-year old flesh.

A U.S. official called it
a "crime of opportunity,"
but every Iraqi knows they stalked her
as Cheney and Rumsfeld stalked Iraq,
crouching behind lies the size of boulders,
monitoring winds,
moving through a grassy savannah of misinformation,
certain of the entitlement of their sex, their race,
their overweening weaponry.

They singled Abeer out
as the neocons singled out Iraq,
for its vulnerability,
for the treasures hidden beneath the plain folds of its dress.

They raped her
as the Coalition Provisional Authority raped Iraq,
forcing its legs,
authorizing foreign capital to penetrate, to seed itself.

And after raping her,
after killing her parents and her younger sister,
they poured petrol
and set her on fire.
She burned just as Iraq burns,
blue and orange flames devouring its body,
thick, black smoke scorching the throat and eyes
of anyone who tries to watch,
who tries to scream for help.

David Smith-Ferri is the author of Battlefield Without Borders: Iraq Poems, forthcoming this fall from Haley's Publishing. He can be reached at: smithferri@pacific.net

Friday July 21, 06:29 PM

By Sam Dagher

JDAIDET AL-AGHAWAT, Iraq (AFP) - Amid orange orchards, date palms and fields full of blooming sunflowers, some 150 Iraqis huddle in a rundown village school as they seek refuge from a daily staple of bloodshed and threats.

"They slaughtered my friend like a sheep," said Haidar Abdel Salam, 25, explaining why he and eight family members fled their home in the Qatun neighborhood of Baquba, capital of Diyala province east of Baghdad, after seeing neighbours executed simply for being Shiite Muslim.

With all eyes on the violence in Baghdad and in a country where death is served like daily bread, there is little focus on events in places such as Diyala, which has a population of 1.3 million and shares a border with Iran to the east.

With both the Tigris and Diyala rivers running through a lush land filled with green fields and orchards, Diyala is quite a contrast to the arid provinces around it.

But this natural beauty is the setting for extreme violence and displacement as its communities threaten to tear the province apart -- not a good harbinger for the country as a whole in a place known as "mini-Iraq" for its ethnic and religious mix.

A bullet-riddled sign at the entrance to Baquba, the provincial seat, reads: "Welcome to Iraq's orange capital."

Except for a few hours each day when residents shop and run errands, this once bustling city is a deserted ghost town where gunmen roam the alleyways and main market, carrying out their crimes with impunity as Iraqi security forces struggle to assert their authority.

"They killed our neighbour Abu Hussein. They have killed too many people," Haidar's brother Abdel Khaleq, 31, said, recalling their time in Baquba.

Similar chilling tales of terror and intimidation were told by other members of the 30 families that had fled the city.

Some had their front doors blown up or received menacing notes demanding that they evacuate or be slaughtered.

With their tattered belongings they camped out on straw mats and foam mattresses in the courtyard of this crumbling elementary school in the mainly Shiite village of Jdaidet al-Aghawat, west of Baquba.

Deprived of what little income they had as shop owners or day labourers, many now survive on the good graces of the Jdaidet villagers.

"I can't believe what's happening to us. We are damned!" Ismail Khalil, 27, shouted, clenching his fist as tears rolled down his cheeks.

Since the February bombing of a Shiite shrine unleashed an unprecedented wave of sectarian violence, some 150,000 people had been displaced from their homes by the end of June, according to a report released Tuesday by the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq.

It said that internal displacement was driven by the relentless bloodshed that claimed the lives of nearly 6,000 civilians in May and June alone.

Baghdad and adjacent Diyala have been the hardest hit.

In Khalis, the province's second largest town, everything looks normal in the main market as shoppers stroll past street vendors hawking their wares.

But in a town that has seen its fair share of mosque and funeral tent bombings over the past two years, the market's entrances are barricaded.

Talking to the predominantly Shiite residents, one senses a community under siege.

It was just south of Khalis, in the village of Hibhib, where Al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed by US forces.

"This normalcy is a lie -- we are trapped," 22-year-old student Mohammed Khalil said.

He cannot go to Baghdad to get his university exam results, let alone to nearby Baquba, for fear of being kidnapped or killed.

Many Sunni residents of Diyala also say they can't venture out on the Baquba-Baghdad highway because they are afraid of being kidnapped or killed by revenge-seeking Shiite militiamen.

"The word is out in Baghdad that all Sunnis from Diyala are Shiite killers," Daham Hussein, 25, a Sunni Arab soldier said.

A Sunni Arab MP from Diyala, Tayseer al-Mashhadani, was kidnapped by militiamen on July 1 as she traveled to the capital from her home province.

Some of the area's tribal leaders are trying to fight the tide of senseless violence and ethnic cleansing by extending their protection to all those living in the tight-knit communities.

"Four Shiites in my village were threatened, but I did not allow that. This is nonsense. My two wives are Shiites," Sheikh Ali al-Jumaili, a Sunni Arab alderman from Al-Kubat north of Baquba, said indignantly.