Showing posts with label Iraqi Government. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Iraqi Government. Show all posts
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Wanna 'Play'? Know Your Players... al-Maliki Tries To "Kick Out The JAMS" In Iraq: The tangled web of Shia politics
OK Ok... Me Bad... The MC5 Would have most likely been Kickin' it WITH the JAMS, considering they were the 'musical wing' of the vehemently anti-imperialist White Panther Party
Ahem!
First... Sitrep & setup from Juan Cole's Informed Comment
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Najaf under Curfew;
As Sadr Brother-in-Law Killed;
13 Killed in Baghdad Clashes
Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that the Shiite holy city of Najaf is under a strict curfew after a drive by shooting that killed Riyad al-Nuri, the head of the Sadr office in that city. Nuri was Muqtada al-Sadr's brother-in-law, married to one of al-Sadr's sistsers. On of Nuri's sisters is married to Murtada al-Sadr, the younger brother of Muqtada.
Muqtada called on the Iraqi government to conduct an investigation into the death.
Sadrist spokesperson Salah al-Ubaydi called on Sadrists to show restraint.
Al-Zaman says that some have implicated al-Nuri in the murder of Abdul Majid Khoie on April 10, 2003.
Amit Paley at WaPo has more.
McClatchy positions the story with regard to Muqtada al-Sadr's assertion that the US was behind al-Nuri's death. The US denied the charge. McClatchy observes, "The timing of the killing — not even two weeks after more than 120 people died and at least 300 were wounded in fighting between Sadr's militiamen and government forces in the port city of Basra — raises the specter of a wider rebellion that could spread to Sadr's strongholds in Baghdad." In Full
From an ISN Security Watch Paper titled: The tangled web of Shia politics
Badr Corps vs JAM
Aside from the government-JAM conflict, there is another equally important dynamic at work here. The Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) and its armed wing, the Badr Corps, are bent on destroying the power of the al-Sadr movement. What has added urgency to this strategy is the crucial provincial elections of October 2008.
In 2005, the Sadrists boycotted the local elections. Consequently, the ISCI won seven out of nine southern Shia governorates (that is, all but Maysan and Basra). Three years of economic mismanagement and graft by ISCI functionaries and their cronies, plus the Sadrists' continuing appeal to the mostly impoverished Shias of the south can easily translate into a huge electoral victory for the al-Sadr movement come this October - a prospect clearly dreaded by both the ISCI and al-Maliki. (Al-Maliki's own Dawa Party has no mass base to speak of.)
From the beginning, in 2003, the two main rival Shia groups - the ISCI and the al-Sadr movement - followed completely different political tracks.
The ISCI, which was formed in Iran in the 1980s, built an institutional alliance with the US to capture strategic positions in the state and security establishments. For example, its control over the Ministries of Treasury and Interior has brought it great political and financial dividends. It also has virtual control over the two holy cities of Karbala and Najaf with all the financial rewards and the prestige that is conferred on the custodians of the shrines.
The ISCI's social base consists of the Shia merchant classes of Karbala, Najaf and Baghdad (they happen to have long-standing links with their Iranian counterparts), Shia nouveau riche developers, and the Shia middle classes, including the secular variety - although the latter's number is dwindling fast thanks to migration.
In contrast, the al-Sadr movement has always oriented itself toward the poor and the disfranchised.
This view is seconded by an anonymous commenter @ Informed comment, and I.
This later round of fighting has clear motives . The populistic ,poor oriented , anti-occupation Mehdi Army is set to win elections by a landslide.
Colaborationist Maliki will try to provoke a civil war he hopes to win with the help of America and the SCIRI militias disguised as iraki soldiers. Maliki's plan is to , instead of elections , give irakis blood and bullets .
Sadr knows democracy will bring him victory , but Mahdi people can not surrender their weapons without been killed or imprisoned in no time . This weapons may be the only hope if America goes for permanent occupation (colonization).
That is why neutral grand ayatollah Sistani is silent about the Mahdi weapons and does not order Sadr to disarm . This weapons are the last hope of freedom for Irak and Sistani knows and remains silent. So Maliki and Bush viciously attack the Mehdi Army hoping Sadr will lift his cease fire and hell will get loose and elections be forgotten .
I pray Sadr will find a peacefull way out , but when the other side is trying to aniquilate (sic) you it is very difficult to find a peacefull outcome . I hope God will give Sadr wisdom for the task. Source
ISN Security Watch - Iraq: The tangled web of Shia politics
Friday, April 4, 2008
If You Read The News Carefully Over Time, It Becomes Quite Obvious The Pentagon And US State Dept Support Iraqi Death Squads
NewsweekThe ‘Body Contractors'
Babak Dehghanpisheh
Dec 15, 2007
"Saber Dulaimi, a stocky 27-year-old—who declined to give his real name for security reasons—belongs to one of the local Sunni militias that have signed up to work with the Americans in west Baghdad.In Full @ Newsweek
One month ago, a handful of his comrades roared up to his checkpoint in a green Daewoo sedan and white Toyota pickup. In the back of the sedan two men—from a Shiite militia—were tied up. In the back of the pickup were two bodies.
"We were expecting an American patrol at any time," says Dulaimi. His commander ordered the men to hide the bodies, fast.
They threw the corpses in a narrow, dry ditch on the outskirts of their neighborhood, and covered them lightly with dirt and leaves.
A month has passed and none of the militiamen has heard about the bodies again."
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Is This What Reconstruction Means? Iraqi brick factory kicks into high gear - UPI.com
UPI:
Iraqi brick factory kicks into high gearMethinks blast wall factories would be a better investment in the near to mid to long-term.
April 1, 2008 at 7:45 PM
BAGHDAD, April 1 (UPI) -- Production at Iraq's largest brick factory swung into high gear Tuesday, boosting employment opportunities in a project that cost the U.S. taxpayer nothing.
The Narhwan Brick Factory Complex east of Baghdad houses 167 facilities, each independently owned and operated by Iraqis. The complex produced roughly 4 million bricks a day in late February and those numbers should go up dramatically, said U.S. Army Lt. Col. Mark Sullivan, the commander of operations there.
Following several "clear and hold" operations in October that targeted insurgents using the complex as a stronghold, Sullivan and his team took the opportunity to bring the facility back online.
Sullivan called a meeting with the owners of the facilities, as well as tribal and local leaders, to discuss coordination with the Iraqi government on issues such as electricity and supplies of heavy fuel oil needed to fire the kilns. The high turnout prompted Sullivan to ask the officials to nominate four members to act as union delegates to liaise with Baghdad.
After convincing ministers in Baghdad of the merit of the project, production at the facility began to pick up steam in January, Sullivan said.
Sullivan put the initial job estimates for the facility at about 10,000 Iraqis but said increased production could put that over 25,000 as the season picks up. The facility employed some 3,000 workers in early January with production levels at around 250,000 bricks per day, but production quadrupled in the first months of the year.
With production entering full swing in April and orders coming not only from the government, but approved contractors, the facility should continue to be a success, Sullivan said. [Source]
Besides lack of security to protect brick constructed buildings (the brick fragments are like glass shrapnel when hit by (not so) 'smart bombs'), the bricks are also easy to throw at the occupying army, which will cause many more civilian casualties.As any Palestinian can tell you, brick throwing is a capital crime... and you will be shot on sight.
At this juncture, I would like to re-inform my readers that Iraq was an highly industrialized, secular society, and now we CHEER! (Hurrah!)... because a brick factory comes online.
There's GOTTA be a war crime between 'then' and 'now' that we can 'hang' (as in the Nuremberg tribunal meaning of 'hang') the Bush administration and it's cronies with...
Just different places, with different faces, but the same War-mongering PIGS
"...the conclusion of the trials at Nuremberg, in which 11 high-ranking Nazi officers were ultimately condemned to death by hanging. One of them, Hermann Göring, managed to finish himself in his cell with a cyanide capsule just hours before the execution was to take place, but the others took their trip to the gallows.
Joachim von Ribbentrop, Hitler’s foreign minister, was the first to go. From an Oct. 28, 1946 dispatch in Time magazine headlined “Night Without Dawn” (the ellipses are in the original):At 1:11 a.m. he entered the gymnasium, and all officers, official witnesses and correspondents rose to attention. Ribbentrop’s manacles were removed and he mounted the steps (there were 13) to the gallows. With the noose around his neck, he said: “My last wish … is an understanding between East and West. …” All present removed their hats. The executioner tightened the noose. A chaplain standing beside him prayed. The assistant executioner pulled the lever, the trap dropped open with a rumbling noise, and Ribbentrop’s hooded figure disappeared. The rope was suddenly taut, and swung back & forth, creaking audibly.
The executioner was U.S. Master Sergeant John C. Woods, 43, of San Antonio, a short, chunky man who in his 15 years as U.S. Army executioner has hanged 347 people. Said he afterwards: “I hanged those ten Nazis … and I am proud of it. … I wasn’t nervous. … A fellow can’t afford to have nerves in this business. … I want to put in a good word for those G.I.s who helped me … they all did swell. … I am trying to get [them] a promotion. … The way I look at this hanging job, somebody has to do it. I got into it kind of by accident, years ago in the States “
Ten more executions would follow that evening, but for all of Sergeant Woods’ experience (and for all of the collected wisdom the military had at its disposal on proper hanging techniques), the Nuremberg executions were, it seems, a ghoulishly untidy affair. In Full @ The New York Times
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