BUSH CAVES IN TO
ISLAMIST CONSTITUTION FOR IRAQ -- AND THE U.S. PRESS
BLOWS THE STORY
The picture:Iraqi boy, Ali Jabbour, crying besides
corpse of all members of his family, who were killed by
Iraqi police yesterday (Assafir, 8/23/05).
If the Bush administration brokered a deal in Occupied
Iraq to enshrine Islamic law as the guiding principle of
the new Iraqi Constitution, you'd think it would be
headline news in the U.S. media, wouldn't you? Well,
that's what has happened -- yet you can search the
Sunday papers in vain to find this sell-out to the
Islamists clearly portrayed -- or, in some cases, even
mentioned.
In a dispatch that Reuters moved at 1:33 P.M. on
Saturday (August 20), the headline reads, "U.S.
concedes ground to Islamists on Iraqi law."
"U.S. diplomats have conceded ground to Islamists on
the role of religion in Iraq, negotiators said on
Saturday as they raced to meet a 48-hour deadline to
draft a constitution under intense U.S. pressure,"
Reuters reported. "Shi'ite, Sunni and Kurdish
negotiators all said there was accord on a bigger role
for Islamic law than Iraq had before.
"But a secular Kurdish politician said Kurds
opposed making Islam 'the,' not 'a,'main source of law --
changing current wording -- and subjecting all
legislation to a religious test. 'We understand the
Americans have sided with the Shi'ites," he said.
"It's shocking. It doesn't fit American values. They
have spent so much blood and money here, only to back the
creation of an Islamist state ... I can't believe that's
what the Americans really want or what the American
people want.'"
Under the soporific headline, "Iraqi
Talks Move Ahead on Some Issues," The
Sunday New York Times did report, under an
August 20 Baghdad deadline, that "Under a deal
brokered Friday by the American ambassador, Zalmay
Khalilzad (right), Islam was to be named "a
primary source of legislation" in the new Iraqi
constitution, with the proviso that no legislation be
permitted that conflicted with the 'universal principles'
of the religion. The latter phrase raised concerns that
Iraqi judges would have wide latitude to strike down laws
now on the books, as well as future legislation. At the
same time, according to a Kurdish leader involved in the
talks, Mr. Khalilzad had backed language that would have
given clerics sole authority in settling marriage and
family disputes. That gave rise to concerns that women's
rights, as they are enunciated in Iraq's existing laws,
could be curtailed. Finally, according to the person
close to the negotiations, Mr. Khalilzad had been backing
an arrangement that could have allowed clerics to have a
hand in interpreting the constitution." But because
of the way the Times presented the story, it's
doubtful that anyone bothered to pay attention to it or
wade into the body of the story to find this revealing
detail.
The Washington Post also put a snooze of a
headline on its Sunday story: "Kurds
Fault U.S. on Iraqi Charter," said the
Post header -- but it's not until the story's fifth
paragraph that one gets to the meat, when the paper
reports that, "The working draft of the constitution
stipulates that no law can contradict Islamic principles.
In talks with Shiite religious parties, Kurdish
negotiators said they have pressed unsuccessfully to
limit the definition of Islamic law to principles agreed
upon by all groups. The Kurds said current language in
the draft would subject Iraqis to extreme interpretations
of Islamic law. Kurds also contend that provisions in the
draft would allow Islamic clerics to serve on the high
court, which would interpret the constitution. That would
potentially subject marriage, divorce, inheritance and
other civil matters to religious law and could harm
women's rights, according to the Kurdish negotiators and
some women's groups."
Moreover, the Post devalued the impact of
this information by relying solely on Kurdish sources.
But the Reuters dispatch also cited one of the main Sunni
negotiators on the Constitution confirming the U.S.
sell-out to the Islamists: "Sunni Arab negotiator
Saleh al-Mutlak also said a deal was struck which would
mean parliament could pass no legislation that
'contradicted Islamic principles. A constitutional court
would rule on any dispute on that, [a] Shi'ite official
[of one of the main parties in the governing coalition]
said," Reuters reported, further quoting the Sunni's
Mutlak as saying "The Americans agreed...."
Given the way the two national U.S. dailies -- which
set the TV news agenda -- played this story, it's hardly
surprising that shallow little George Stephanopoulos (right),
on this morning's ABC political chat show "This
Week," didn't even bother to raise the question
of the U.S. cave-in to an Islamic Constitution, neither
when quizzing several U.S. Senators (Republicans Allen
and Hagel) and Gov. Bill Richardson on Iraq, nor in the
round-table discussion with journalists which followed.
And on NBC's "Meet the Press" this
morning, David Gregory (subbing for Tim Russert) also
failed to bring up the U.S. sell-out to an Islamist
Constitution in long discussions of Iraq with Sens. Russ
Feingold and Trent Lott (Feingold should have mentioned
it--but didn't), although Gregory did bring it up in a
roundtable at the very end of the show (by which time a
lot of people had probably switched to watching "Sports
Wives" -- why didn't Gregory talk about this
important news at the top of the hour, particularly when
questioning Lott, who kept insisting "we're making
progress" in Iraq?)
The Reuters dispatch also contained this useful and
highly relevant reminder, absent from both the Times
and Post reports: that Bush's
ambassador to Iraq, Khalilzad, "helped draft a
constitution in his native Afghanistan that declared it
an 'Islamic Republic' in which no law could contradict
Islam." And the Post story, way down, quoted the
Sunni's Mutlak as saying of Khalilzad, "'His main
interest is to push the constitution on time, no matter
what the constitution has in it,'' said Salih Mutlak, a
Sunni delegate who has been outspoken against some
compromise proposals. 'No country in the world can draft
their constitution in three months. They themselves took
10 years,' Mutlak said, referring to the United States.
'Why do they wish to impose a silly constitution on
us?'" Meanwhile, the AP
reports this morning that the Sunnis say they've been
left out of the negotiations over the Constitution.-- a
sure prescription for more violence in Iraq.
Why is the Bush administration strong-arming the
Iraqis into rushing through a new Constitution with so
little time to craft it? Two reasons:
Bush desperately wants to score a p.r. victory in
"the war on terror," in which his
administration continues to insist that Iraq is the main
front (even though it is the U.S. occupation of Iraq that
is now the main motivator for terrorist-style
violence); and because failure to
achieve a new Constitution on time would undoubtedly
cause new elections in Iraq -- and the Bushies are
terribly afraid of the Iraqi voters, fearing that
discontent in the country with the U.S. occupation and
its failure to bring either security from violence or to
deliver basics -- like water and electric power-- would
lead to the election of a government less maleable by
Washington, thus creating further U.S. domestic backlash
against the Anglo-American occupation of Iraq. That
short-sighted desire for achieving something that could
be sold by Bush's spinmeisters to the American people as
'progress" in Iraq is what's driven Bush's man to
break arms on behalf of an Islamist Constitution for
Iraq.
The Reuters report cited above is reinforced by the
coverage in the daily Al-Hayat, cited
by Middle East expert Prof. Juan Cole this morning on his
excellent blog, Informed Content. Cole (left)
writes: "In one of the major disputes outstanding
between the Kurds and the Shiites, on whether Islamic law
will be the fundamental source or only one
of the sources of Iraqi law, the Shiite religious
parties appear to have won out. AFP
reports that the reason for this is that the
United States has swung around and begun to support the
primacy of Islamic canon law.
"Al-Hayat writes, 'Also, an agreement was
reached that Islam is the religion of state, and that no
law shall be enacted that contradicts the agreed-upon
essential verities of Islam. Likewise, the inviolability
of the highest [Shiite] religious authorities in the land
is safeguarded, without any allusion to a detailed
description. The paragraph governing these matters will
specify that Islam is 'the fundamental basis' for
legislation, though there will be an allusion to the
protection of democratic values, human rights, and social
and national values. A Higher Council will be formed to
review new legislation to ensure it does not contravene
the essential verities of the Islamic religion.' Personal
status law, concerning marriage, divorce, alimony,
inheritance, and so forth, will be adjudicated by
religious courts in accordance with the religion or sect
to which the individual belongs."
And, of course, nobody mentioned it in all these cited
reports, but gays and lesbians in particular also have
huge reason to be afraid of an Islamic Constitution in
Iraq. But Prof. Cole also extensively quotes the text of
the Islamic Constitution which U.S. Ambassador Khalilzad
godfathered in Afghanistan.
TWO GREEN ZONES
Dahr Jamail, Electronic Iraq, 29 August 2005
As the US-backed Iraqi puppet government flails about
arguing over the so-called constitution, Iraq remains in
a state of complete anarchy. There is no government
control whatsoever, even inside the infamous "Green
Zone" where the puppets seem to have tangled their
strings.
Why the harsh tone for the conflagrations of the
so-called Iraqi government?
Because the price paid for this unimaginably huge
misadventure of the neo-conservative driven Bush junta is
being paid by real human beings who shed real blood and
cry real tears. Because well over 100,000 Iraqis and over
1,800 US soldiers would be alive today if it wasn't for
the puppeteers of Mr. Bush.
The coward sits behind his guards in Crawford, Texas, too
afraid to deal with the reality of the grief he and his
masters have caused to thousands of military families who
have lost loved ones in Iraq. Meanwhile, fires are raging
out of control not only in Iraq, but right here in the
US.
"I ask you, Mr Bush, if you believe that this war is
for "Our Freedom" and "Our Values"
why don't you send your daughters to fight for
freedom," wrote Fernando Suarez del Solar recently,
who lost his son in Iraq due to the lies of Mr. Bush.
He continued, "Why don't your closest associates
send their children to defend these values? Why are the
children of immigrant families dying? Why are children
from working families who are the least privileged dying?
Why Mr. Bush? Why?"
Of course Suarez del Solar knows the answer. It's a
rhetorical question asked of a prep school punk who has
never earned nor risked anything. A smirking dimwit, who
has never truly served his country, let alone fellow
human beings outside of his gangster corporate crony pals
who inserted him into the highest office...twice.
Today he chooses to ignore the fire which is spreading
across the US as he ignores the debacle in Iraq, where
the US military must leave, will leave, but are unable to
leave for fear of tarnishing what is left of the now
sordid reputation of the US.
I get emails daily from sources throughout Iraq...both
Iraqi and American. Even inside US bases in the newest
colony things don't seem to be going so well, according
to an American man who is working there as support.
"I don't know how much longer I can stand working
for these idiots and their brothers' mothers' sisters'
cousin," he wrote me recently, "They have acres
of armored air conditioned trucks but won't pay to fix
the alternators, so the drivers must use the worst of the
equipment...no armor, no air conditioning...You know the
heat here, now add the heat of an engine to that cab and
throw in a few rockets, mortars, and IED's [roadside
bombs] and it makes for a very bad day. I'm trying to
expose the corruption of the Third Country National
contractors by finding them a forum to send the truth.
Prisoners, slaves, concubines. My life may be a
contradiction, but I will not compromise with evil. The
enemy is inside the wire."
Wars for empire don't change...and Iraq is the perfect
example. Invading armies using slave labor (foreign in
this case due to their deep distrust of Iraqis), taking
advantage of those who lack privilege, the poor,
minorities, to do the dirty work while the top 1% make
more money than ever before.
And the pirates behind the US policy-making in Iraq have
chosen, perhaps to their chagrin at this point, to
disregard some of the latest history from a past
occupation of Iraq.
During the previous British occupation of Iraq, the
resistance began in Fallujah. As a response the British
shelled half of that city to the ground, much like the US
military did recently as part of their failed policy. (US
soldiers are now dying in and near Fallujah again.)
It was said that if the British left Iraq civil war would
ignite. Just as we are hearing today, even though
state-sponsored civil war is in full swing, thanks to the
occupiers.
The rule of the British Empire over Iraq went on for
three decades before the Brits withdrew. Every year of
that time found an uprising against the occupiers...and
now less than three years into the failed US occupation,
lesser uprisings occur daily.
Attacks on US forces in Iraq are now back up over 70 per
day...we'll cross the 2,000 dead mark before too much
longer, and things are about to get much, much worse. As
Iraqis continue to say, "Today is better than
tomorrow." The same goes for US troops there.
There is a reason why a relatively recent Army survey
found that 54% of all soldiers in Iraq reported either
"low" or "very low" morale.
There is also a reason why, again according to the Army,
that 30% of all soldiers returning from Iraq develop
mental health problems 3-4 months after their return.
And there is a reason why soldiers like Nicolas Prubyla
come home and join organizations like Iraq Veterans
Against the War.
"Up until five days ago, I had large amounts of
blood in my stool," he told me recently, "I've
felt tired all the time, I have had loss of hair...loss
of the feeling in my right arm...I'm battling this
stuff."
What he is battling is exposure to uranium munitions in
Iraq. He is battling radiation sickness as the result of
the most recent nuclear war waged by the United States of
America. There is a reason why over 11,000 veterans from
the '91 Gulf War are dead today, and over 250,000 others
are on medical disability. That reason (hundreds and
hundreds of tons of uranium munitions dropped on Iraq) is
the same thing Prubyla is battling today.
"As the years go on this is going to effect a hell
of a lot more people than we think...radioactive dust and
the clouds of smoke and dust from firing the DU [depleted
uranium] is getting to us now," he said, "And I
know I'm not the only person in my unit-my boss got
diagnosed with cancer, one of my other buddies who is 23
years-old is getting rashes....every time I do more
research on DU-I'm seeing that I have all the side
effects."
Prubyla has realized what more and more veterans
understand...that the powers that be in our military
plutocracy (also known as the US government) could care
less for their well being. One of the shadow members of
the current plutocracy who is also an exalted
neo-conservative, Henry Kissinger, has referred to
military men as "dumb, stupid animals to be
used" as pawns for foreign policy.
People like Prubyla get this; they have had enough, and
are now doing something about it.
Meanwhile in the Crawford "Green Zone," Mr.
Bush chooses to ignore the resistance movement that is
standing outside his fence. But that is alright, because
the hundreds of people there now protesting represent
tens (if not hundreds) of millions across the country
who, like the Iraqi resistance, are not going to go away.
www.electroniciraq.net
(c)2004, 2005 Dahr Jamail. More writing, photos and
commentary at dahrjamailiraq.com. All
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another website, copying and printing requires the
permission of Dahr Jamail.
.Robert Fisk: How can the US ever win,
when Iraqi children die like this?
08/14/05 "The
Independent"
-- -- Theres the wreckage of a car bomb that killed
seven Americans on the corner of a neighbouring street.
Close by stands the shuttered shop of a phone supplier
who put pictures of Saddam on a donkey on his mobiles. He
was shot three days ago, along with two other men who had
committed the same sin. In the al-Jamia neighbourhood, a
US Humvee was purring up the road so we gingerly backed
off and took a side street. In this part of Baghdad, you
avoid both the insurgents and the Americans - if you are
lucky.
Yassin al-Sammerai was not. On 14 July, the second grade
schoolboy had gone to spend the night with two college
friends and - this being a city without electricity in
the hottest month of the year - they decided to spend the
night sleeping in the front garden. Let his broken 65
year-old father Selim take up the story, for hes
the one who still cannot believe his son is dead - or
what the Americans told him afterwards.
"It was three-thirty in the morning and they were
all asleep, Yassin and his friends Fahed and Walid
Khaled. There was an American patrol outside and then
suddenly, a Bradley armoured vehicle burst through the
gate and wall and drove over Yassin. You know how heavy
these things are. He died instantly. But the Americans
didnt know what theyd done. He was lying
crushed under the vehicle for 17 minutes. Um Khaled, his
friends mother, kept shouting in Arabic:
"There is a boy under this vehicle."
According to Selim al-Sammerai, the Americans first
reaction was to put handcuffs on the two other boys. But
a Lebanese Arabic interpreter working for the Americans
arrived to explain that it was all a mistake. "We
dont have anything against you,she
said. The Americans produced a laminated paper in English
and Arabic entitled "Iraqi Claims Pocket Card"
which tells them how to claim compensation.
The unit whose Bradley drove over Yassin is listed as
"256 BCT A/156 AR, Mortars". Under "Type
of Incident", an American had written: "Raid
destroyed gate and doors." No one told the family
there had been a raid. And nowhere - but nowhere - on the
form does it suggest that the "raid
destroyed the life of the football-loving Yassin
al-Sammerai.
Inside Yassins fathers home yesterday, Selim
shakes with anger and then weeps softly, wiping his eyes.
"He is surely in heaven," one of his surviving
seven sons replies. And the old man looks at me and says:
"He liked swimming too. "
A former technical manager at the Baghdad University
college of arts, Selim is now just a shadow.He is half
bent over on his seat, his face sallow and his cheeks
drawn in. This is a Sunni household in a Sunni area. This
is "insurgent country" for the Americans, which
is why they crash into these narrow streets at night.
Several days ago, a collaborator gave away the location
of a group of Sunni guerrillas and US troops surrounded
the house. A two-hour gun-battle followed until an Apache
helicopter came barrelling out of the darkness and
dropped a bomb on the building, killing all inside.
There is much muttering around the room about the
Americans and the West and I pick up on this quickly and
say how grateful I am that they have let a Westerner come
to their home after what has happened. Selim turns and
shakes me by the hand. "You are welcome here,"
he says. "Please tell people what happened to
us." Outside, my driver is watching the road;
its the usual story. Any car with three men inside
or a man with a mobile phone means "get out".
The sun bakes down. It is a Friday. "These guys take
Fridays off," the driver offers by way of
confidence.
"The Americans came back with an officer two days
later," Selim al-Sammerai continues. "They
offered us compensation. I refused. I lost my son, I told
the officer. I dont want the money - I
dont think the money will bring back my son.
Thats what I told the American." There is a
long silence in the room. But Selim, who is still crying,
insists on speaking again.
"I told the American officer: You have killed
the innocent and such things will lead the people to
destroy you and the people will make a revolution against
you. You said you had come to liberate us from the
previous regime. But you are destroying our walls and
doors."
I suddenly realise that Selim al-Sammerai has
straightened up on his seat and his voice is rising in
strength. "Do you know what the American said to me?
He said, This is fate. I looked at him and I
said, I am very faithful in the fate of God - but
not in the fate of which you speak."
Then one of Yassins brothers says that he took a
photograph of the dead boy as he lay on the ground, a
picture taken on his mobile phone, and he printed a
picture of it and when the Americans returned on the
second day they asked to see it. "They asked me why
I had taken the picture and I said it was so people here
could see what the Americans had done to my brother. They
asked if they could borrow it and bring it back. I gave
it to them but they didnt bring it back. But I
still kept the image on my mobile and I was able to print
another." And suddenly it is in my hands, an obscene
and terrible snapshot of Yassins head crushed flat
as if an elephant had stood upon it, blood pouring from
what had been the back of his brains. "So now, you
see," the brother explains, "the people can
still see what the Americans have done."
In the heat, we slunk out of al-Jamia yesterday, the
place of insurgents and Americans and grief and revenge.
"When the car bomb blew up over there," my
driver says, "the US Humvees went on burning for
three hours and the bodies were still there. The
Americans took three hours to reach them. Al the people
gathered round and watched." And I look at the
carbonised car that still lies on the road and realise it
has now become a little icon of resistance. How, I ask
myself again, can the Americans ever win?
Iraq's Child
Prisoners
Date: August 03, 2004 | 16
Jumada al-Akhir 1425 Hijriah Blog:
Complete text of the article, by Neil Mackay
It was early last October that Kasim Mehaddi Hilas says
he witnessed the rape of a boy prisoner aged about 15 in
the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The kid
was hurting very bad and they covered all the doors with
sheets, he said in a statement given to
investigators probing prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib.
Then, when I heard the screaming I climbed the door
and I saw [the soldiers name is deleted] who
was wearing a military uniform. Hilas, who was
himself threatened with being sexually assaulted in Abu
Graib, then describes in horrific detail how the soldier
raped the little kid.
In another witness statement, passed to the Sunday
Herald, former prisoner Thaar Salman Dawod said: [I
saw] two boys naked and they were cuffed together face to
face and [a US soldier] was beating them and a group of
guards were watching and taking pictures and there was
three female soldiers laughing at the prisoners. The
prisoners, two of them, were young.
Its not certain exactly how many children are being
held by coalition forces in Iraq, but a Sunday Herald
investigation suggests there are up to 107. Their names
are not known, nor is where they are being kept, how long
they will be held or what has happened to them during
their detention.
Proof of the widespread arrest and detention of children
in Iraq by US and UK forces is contained in an internal
Unicef report written in June. The report has
surprisingly not been made public. A key section
on child protection, headed Children in Conflict
with the Law or with Coalition Forces, reads:
In July and August 2003, several meetings were
conducted with CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority)
and Ministry of Justice to address issues related
to juvenile justice and the situation of children
detained by the coalition forces
Unicef is working
through a variety of channels to try and learn more about
conditions for children who are imprisoned or detained,
and to ensure that their rights are respected.
Another section reads: Information on the number,
age, gender and conditions of incarceration is limited.
In Basra and Karbala children arrested for alleged
activities targeting the occupying forces are reported to
be routinely transferred to an internee facility in Um
Qasr. The categorisation of these children as
internees is worrying since it implies
indefinite holding without contact with family,
expectation of trial or due process.
The report also states: A detention centre for
children was established in Baghdad, where according to
ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross) a
significant number of children were detained. Unicef was
informed that the coalition forces were planning to
transfer all children in adult facilities to this
specialised child detention centre. In July
2003, Unicef requested a visit to the centre but access
was denied. Poor security in the area of the detention
centre has prevented visits by independent observers like
the ICRC since last December.
The perceived unjust detention of Iraqi males,
including youths, for suspected activities against the
occupying forces has become one of the leading causes for
the mounting frustration among Iraqi youths and the
potential for radicalisation of this population
group.
Journalists in Germany have also been investigating the
detention and abuse of children in Iraq. One reporter,
Thomas Reutter of the TV programme Report Mainz,
interviewed a US army sergeant called Samuel Provance,
who is banned from speaking about his six months
stationed in Abu Ghraib but told Reutter of how one
16-year-old Iraqi boy was arrested.
He was terribly afraid, Provance said.
He had the skinniest arms Ive ever seen. He
was trembling all over. His wrists were so thin we
couldnt even put handcuffs on him. Right when I saw
him for the first time, and took him for interrogation, I
felt sorry for him.
The interrogation specialists poured water over him
and put him into a car. Then they drove with him through
the night, and at that time it was very, very cold. Then
they smeared him with mud and showed him to his father,
who was also in custody. They had tried out other
interrogation methods on him, but he wasnt to be
brought to talk. The interrogation specialists told me,
after the father had seen his son in this state, his
heart broke. He wept and promised to tell them everything
they wanted to know.
An Iraqi TV reporter Suhaib Badr-Addin al-Baz saw the Abu
Ghraib childrens wing when he was arrested by
Americans while making a documentary. He spent 74 days in
Abu Ghraib.
I saw a camp for children there, he said.
Boys, under the age of puberty. There were
certainly hundreds of children in this camp. Al-Baz
said he heard a 12-year-old girl crying. Her brother was
also held in the jail. One night guards came into her
cell. She was beaten, said al-Baz. I
heard her call out, They have undressed me. They
have poured water over me.
He says he heard her cries and whimpering daily
this, in turn, caused other prisoners to cry as they
listened to her. Al-Baz also told of an ill 15-year-old
boy who was soaked repeatedly with hoses until he
collapsed. Guards then brought in the childs father
with a hood over his head. The boy collapsed again.
Although most of the children are held in US custody, the
Sunday Herald has established that some are held by the
British Army. British soldiers tend to arrest children in
towns like Basra, which are under UK control, then hand
the youngsters over to the Americans who interrogate them
and detain them.
Between January and May this year the Red Cross
registered a total of 107 juveniles in detention during
19 visits to six coalition prisons. The aid
organisations Rana Sidani said they had no complete
information about the ages of those detained, or how they
had been treated. The deteriorating security situation
has prevented the Red Cross visiting all detention
centres.
Amnesty International is outraged by the detention of
children. It is aware of numerous human rights
violations against Iraqi juveniles, including detentions,
torture and ill-treatment, and killings. Amnesty
has interviewed former detainees who say theyve
seen boys as young as 10 in Abu Ghraib.
The organisations leaders have called on the
coalition governments to give concrete information on how
old the children are, how many are detained, why and
where they are being held, and in what circumstances they
are being detained. They also want to know if the
children have been tortured.
Alistair Hodgett, media director of Amnesty International
USA, said the coalition forces needed to be
transparent about their policy of child
detentions, adding: Secrecy is one thing that rings
alarm bells. Amnesty was given brief access to one
jail in Mosul, he said, but has been repeatedly turned
away from all others. He pointed out that even countries
which dont have good records, such as
Libya, gave Amnesty access to prisons. Denying
access just fuels the rumour mill, he said.
Hodgett added that British and US troops should not be
detaining any Iraqis let alone children
following the recent handover of power. They should
all be held by Iraqi authorities, he said.
When the coalition handed over Saddam they should
have handed over the other 3000 detainees.
The British Ministry of Defence confirmed UK forces had
handed over prisoners to US troops, but a spokes man said
he did not know the ages of any detainees given to the
Americans.
The MoD also admitted it was currently holding one
prisoner aged under 18 at Shaibah prison near Um Qasr.
Since the invasion Britain has detained, and later
released, 65 under-18s. The MoD claimed the ICRC had
access to British jails and detainee lists.
High-placed officials in the Pentagon and Centcom told
the Sunday Herald that children as young as 14 were being
held by US forces. We do have juveniles
detained, a source said. They have been
detained as they are deemed to be a threat or because
they have acted against the coalition or Iraqis.
Officially, the Pentagon says it is holding around
60 juvenile detainees primarily aged 16 and 17,
although when it was pointed out that the Red Cross
estimate is substantially higher, a source admitted
numbers may have gone up, we might have detained
more kids.
Officials would not comment about children under the age
of 16 being held prisoner. Sources said:
Its a real challenge ascertaining their
ages. Unlike the UK or the US, they dont have IDs
or birth certificates. The Sunday Herald has been
told, however, that at least five children aged under 16
are being kept at Abu Ghraib and Camp Bucca.
A highly placed source in the Pentagon said: We
have done investigations into accusations of juveniles
being abused and raped and cant find anything that
resembles that.
The Pentagons official policy is to segregate
juvenile prisoners from the rest of the prison
population, and allow young inmates to join family
members also being detained. Our main concern is
that they are not abused or harassed by older detainees.
We know they need special treatment, an official
said.
Pentagon sources said they were unaware how long child
prisoners were kept in jail but said their cases were
reviewed every 90 days. The last review was early last
month. The sources confirmed the children had been
questioned and interrogated when initially detained, but
could not say whether this was an adult-style
interrogation.
The Norwegian government, which is part of the
coalition of the willing, has already said it
will tell the US that the alleged torture of children is
intolerable. Odd Jostein Sæter, parliamentary secretary
at the Norwegian prime ministers office, said:
Such assaults are unacceptable. It is against
international laws and it is also unacceptable from a
moral point of view. This is why we react strongly
We are addressing this in a very severe and direct way
and present concrete demands. This is damaging the
struggle for democracy and human rights in Iraq.
In Denmark, which is also in the coalition, Save the
Children called on its government to tell the occupying
forces to order the immediate release of child detainees.
Neals Hurdal, head of the Danish Save the Children, said
the y had heard rumours of children in Basra being
maltreated in custody since May.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) said it was extremely
disturbed that the coalition was holding children
for long periods in jails notorious for torture. HRW also
criticised the policy of categorising children as
security detainees, saying this did not give
carte blanche for them to be held indefinitely. HRW said
if there was evidence the children had committed crimes
then they should be tried in Iraqi courts, otherwise they
should be returned to their families.
Unicef is profoundly disturbed by reports of
children being abused in coalition jails. Alexandra
Yuster, Unicefs senior adviser on child detention,
said that under international law children should be
detained only as a last resort and only then for the
shortest possible time.
They should have access to lawyers and their families, be
kept safe, healthy, educated, well-fed and not be
subjected to any form of mental or physical punishment,
she added. Unicef is now desperately trying
to get more information on the fate of the children
currently detained in coalition jails.
reference=http://www.sundayherald.com/43796
Posted by Al-Muhajabah, a fair and balanced niqabi, at
02:34 PM
Blog: The
Clipboard From an article:
Young male prisoners were filmed being sodomised by
American soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad,
according to the journalist who first revealed the abuses
there.
Seymour Hersh, who reported on the torture of the
prisoners in New Yorker magazine in May, told an audience
in San Francisco that "it's worse". But he
added that he would reveal the extent of the abuses:
"I'm not done reporting on all this," he told a
meeting of the American Civil Liberties Union.
He said: "The boys were sodomised with the cameras
rolling, and the worst part is the soundtrack, of the
boys shrieking. And this is your government at war."
He accused the US administration, and all but accused
President George Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney of
complicity in covering up what he called "war
crimes".
Blog: The
Clipboard From an article:
Increasing numbers of children in Iraq do not have
enough food to eat and more than a quarter are
chronically undernourished, a UN report says.
Malnutrition rates in children under five have almost
doubled since the US-led intervention - to nearly 8% by
the end of last year, it says.
The report was prepared for the annual meeting of the UN
Human Rights Commission in Geneva. (link)
Is this the better Iraq we promised?
Children Starving in Iraq
Complete text of the article, by the BBC
Increasing numbers of children in Iraq do not have enough
food to eat and more than a quarter are chronically
undernourished, a UN report says. Malnutrition rates in
children under five have almost doubled since the US-led
intervention - to nearly 8% by the end of last year, it
says.
The report was prepared for the annual meeting of the UN
Human Rights Commission in Geneva.
It also expressed concern over North Korea and Sudan's
Darfur province. UN specialist on hunger Jean Ziegler,
who prepared the report, blames the worsening situation
in Iraq on the war led by coalition forces. He was
addressing a meeting of the 53-nation commission, the top
UN rights watchdog, which is halfway through its annual
six-week session.
When Saddam Hussein was overthrown, about 4% of Iraqi
children under five were going hungry; now that figure
has almost doubled to 8%, his report says. Governments
must recognise their extra-territorial obligations
towards the right to food and should not do anything that
might undermine access to it of people living outside
their borders, it says. That point is aimed clearly at
the US, but Washington, which has sent a large delegation
to the Human Rights Commission, declined to respond to
the charges, says the BBC's Imogen Foulkes in Geneva.
MORE FROM ROBERT FISK
People
torn to pieces, relatives scream - another week
in the theme park of death
There are now two Baghdads. One is the Green
Zone, where US and Iraqi officials live in a
protected realm; the other is the danger zone,
where everyone else lives.
Robert Fisk reports from beyond the
Coalition's concrete walls
08/21/05 "The
Independent" -- -- On Monday,
George Bush was praising the greedy sectarian
politicians here - who had totally failed to meet
the new Iraqi constitution deadline - for their
"heroic" efforts for
"democracy". At about the same time, I
came across a friend at one of Baghdad's
best-known hotels. He is the deputy manager and
I've known him for more than three years, but he
now looked twice his age. He grasped my arm and
looked into my face. "Mr Robert," he
said, "do you realise I was kidnapped?"
Every day now, I come across Iraqi acquaintances
- or friends who have cousins or fathers or sons
- who have been kidnapped. Often they are
released. Sometimes they are murdered and I go to
their families to express those condolences which
are especially painful for me - because I am a
Westerner, arriving to say how sorry I am to
relatives who blame the West for the anarchy that
killed their loved ones. This time my friend
survived, just.
Another good friend, a university professor,
visits me for coffee the next day. The absence of
identities in this report tells you all you need
to know about the terror which embraces Baghdad.
"I was invigilating the last exams of term
in the linguistics department and I saw a mature
student cheating. I walked up to him and said I
believed he was cribbing. He said he wasn't. I
told him I would take his papers away and he
leant towards me and made it clear I would be
murdered if I prevented him completing his exams.
I went to the head of department. I thought he
would discipline this man and take away his
papers. But he talked to him and then said that
he could continue the exam. My own head of
department failed me completely." My
professor friend loves English literature, but he
has new problems.
"Many of the students are now very
Islamically oriented. They want their classes
taught through the prism of their religion. But
what can I do? I can't teach existentialism any
more because it would be seen as anti-Islamic -
which means no more Sartre. These same people ask
me for the religious message in Eugene O'Neill's
plays. What can I say? I can't teach any more. Do
you understand this? I can't teach." Since
Baghdad's " liberation" in April 2003,
180 professors and schoolteachers have been
assassinated in Iraq, and shortly after my
professor's visit, I receive a call from one of
his colleagues.
"They kidnapped old Amin Yassin and his son
two days ago. We don't know where they are."
Amin Yassin was not, like some of his colleagues,
an ex-Baathist. He was a retired linguist who
taught grammar in the English department of
Baghdad University. His 30-year-old son is a
secondary school teacher. The two were seized in
the Khavraha neighbourhood, seven miles west of
Baghdad.
On Thursday, in the an-Nahda bus station, two
bombs tear 43 people to pieces - almost all of
them Shia Muslims - and at the al-Kindi hospital,
which also receives a bomb close by, relatives of
the missing are screaming as they try to identify
the dead. The problem is that the morticians
can't fit the limbs to the right bodies and, in
some cases, the right heads to the right torsos.
I head off to the Palestine Hotel where one of
the largest Western news agencies has its
headquarters. I take the lift to an upper floor
only to be met by a guard and a vast steel wall
which blocks off the hotel corridor. He searches
me, sends in my card and after a few minutes an
Iraqi guard stares at me through a grille and
opens an iron door.
I enter to find another vast steel wall in front
of me. Once he has clanged the outer door shut,
the inner door is opened and I am in the grotty
old hotel corridor.
The reporters are sitting in a fuggy room with a
small window from which they can see the Tigris
river. One of the American staff admits he has
not been outside "for months". An Arab
reporter does their street reporting; an American
travels around Iraq - but only as an
"embed" with US troops. No American
journalists from this bureau travel the streets
of Baghdad. This is not hotel journalism, as I
once described it. This is prison
journalism.
One of the Americans, an old and brave friend of
mine from Beirut days, walks over. "Have a
look at this, Fisky," he says. "This is
the kind of crap we get from the Americans these
days - this is what they want us to write
about." It is a news release from the
Coalition press office, the spin doctors of the
occupation troops here. "Comics Bring
Barrels of Laughs to Task Force Baghdad," it
says.
I drive back across Baghdad. There is a massive
traffic jam because the Iraqi National Guard -
the American-trained Iraqis who are supposed to
save Donald Rumsfeld's career and let the US
forces reduce their troop strength here - have
mounted a checkpoint. Most of them are so
frightened that they are wearing ski-masks over
their mouths. Like every Iraqi I meet, I do not
trust the Iraqi National Guard. They have been
infiltrated by both Sunni and Shia insurgents and
now have a nasty propensity to carry out house
raids on Sunni areas, to arrest the menfolk and
then to steal as much money as they can find in
the house. "First they arrest my son and
then they take all my jewellery," a woman
complained on an Arabic satellite channel that
was investigating this venal militia.
I go home and switch on my television to find the
BBC reporting on an " elite" force of
Iraqi troops who are receiving anti-terrorism
training in Britain. And there they are, foliage
attached to their helmets, leaping over hedges
and cooling streams. In the Welsh
mountains.
Friday night. In the heart of this vast and
oven-like city stands the Green Zone, 10 square
kilometres of barricaded, walled, sealed-off
palaces, villas and gardens - once the Raj-like
centre of Saddam's regime wherein now dwell the
Iraqi government, the constitutional committee,
the US embassy, the British embassy and many
hundreds of Western mercenaries. Many of them
never meet Iraqis. Women in shorts jog past the
rose beds; armed men and women "
contractors" lie by the pool. There were at
least three restaurants - until one of them was
blown up by suicide bombers. You can buy phone
accessories in a local shop, newspapers,
pornographic DVDs. For tactical reasons, the
Americans were forced to include dozens of
middle-class Iraqi homes inside the Green Zone, a
decision that has outraged many of the
householders. They often have to wait four hours
to pass through the security checkpoints. Irony
of ironies, the tomb of Michel Aflaq, founder of
the Baath party that once included both Iraq and
Syria, lies inside the Green Zone.
On Friday night, this crusader castle was bathed
in its usual floodlights. I was looking up at the
stars over the city when there was a dull sound
and a flash of light from within the Green Zone.
Somewhere not far from me, someone had launched a
mortar at the illuminated fishbowl that has
become the symbol of occupation for all Iraqis.
|
US attack on Mosque?
It is so hard to tell what is really going on in Iraq
now. A lot of Western reporters have left because of the
poor security. So what do we make of this report in
Al-Zaman (which is by no means anti-American)?--
Ahmad Hamzah, reporting from Ramadi: "6 civilians
were killed and more than 30 wounded, among them 3
children, when US forces attacked a mosque on the
outskirts of Ramadi. Eyewitnesses told al-Zaman yesterday
that 'American tanks fired on the Ibn al-Jawzi Mosque
between the cities of Khalidiyah and Ramadi during Friday
prayers, killing 6 and wounding 30, who were ttansported
to the hospital. The six most severely wounded of them
were taken to Baghdad for treatment.' The eyewitnesses
also said that 'The US forces had notbe subjected to any
armed attack and no one opened fire on them, so that
their action was greeted with amazement."
Al-Zaman maintains that the US had in fact been attacked.
Reuters
reports that
"RAMADI - An attack on a U.S. military patrol
followed by U.S. gunfire left 15 Iraqis dead and 17
wounded in a town near Ramadi, west of Baghdad,
residents said. The U.S. military said it was not
responsible."
So we have a situation where it is being claimed by
the Iraqis that the US killed 15 and wounded 17
civilians in a mosque when it replied to the convoy
attack. But the US military is denying this charge.
or at least is denying responsibility.
So did the US fire on innocent civilians at prayer?
Or was the mosque being used as an insurgent base, in
the vain hope that the US would not hit a mosque? At
this point, I have no way of knowing. But I can say
that al-Zaman is a paper of record for Iraqis, and
this reportage will be influential.
Nothing would make Iraqis angrier at the US than such
an attack on a mosque congregation at prayer,and they
will likely believe the report.
|