Topics

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Newcastle Stop the War / Report on the work of the Tyneside Stop the War Coalition 2006-2008

« on: December 08, 2008, 05:07:10 PM »

Report on the work of the Tyneside Stop the War Coalition 2006-2008

AGM Report given in March this Year - Useful in summing up our work and developing our work in 2009

Over the last seven years the movement has organised hundreds of events of all kinds and some of the most significant protests of modern times around the principles that this war on terror is “Not in our name”, “Occupation is not liberation” and that “Another world is possible”.    This focus on the necessity for another world rather than just opposing their wars was very noticeable in what people said, the reports and video made by the stop the war coalition at the world against war demonstration on March 15th.   In November 2006 TSWC moved and  passed at the national stop the war conference in London a motion on the necessity to establish an anti-war government that does not allow its troops to occupy foreign soil, recognises the integrity and sovereignty of other nations and for a foreign policy that resolves conflicts through diplomacy and peaceful means. This is entirely the sentiment being expressed on the world against was demonstration. Pro-war government has to go and an anti-war and pro peace movement should establish countries and a world where wars are an anachronism.  For the first time in modern times, you could say, there is a practical programme and unity for an anti-war government which is not some marginalised pacifist programme but a practical programme taken up by the movement which engages people from the armed forces to the peace camp.  There are different views on how this will be achieved but make no mistake this is a common cause and common aim for all peace loving people

As you know since the last AGM in October 2006 an even more  conscious attack has been launched on people of Islamic faith in Britain and throughout the world.  In Britain it has clearly been an attempt to try and destroy the coherence of the people in resisting their war programme and their programme to attack everyone’s human rights in society. It has been virulently spearheaded by the mass media and at times a frenzied campaign reminiscent of the Nazis.  As you know the anti-war movement to its great credit has stood firm on this defending everyone’s right to conscience, in a reflection of what is best in society and a modern world that it unity of all the people in defence of their rights and the rights of all. We responded to that taking part in the national events such as the Peoples Assembly in London against the attack on people of Islamic faith as well as the activities on Tyneside. Most recently we organised a very successful public meeting at which Moazzam Begg and others who spoke in spoke in Newcastle to a packed audience on this question.   Also, at the 2007 National Conference of the Stop the War Coalition it passed our motion on defending the rights of all as integral to the success of the anti-war movement.

That National Stop the war conference last year was a very crucial conference, if not the most crucial, for the Stop the War Coalition, coming six years after its founding and with the stepping down of Tony Blair and the claims of the new Prime Minister that he was disengaging from Iraq.  If you remember it was two weeks after the they tried and failed to ban the National Demonstration on October 8th at the opening of Parliament under Brown.  Almost his first act was against us – that is very telling of how the big parties will continue to behave.  I think it could be said that it reflected the whole trial of strength with these warmongers in which 5,000 people gathered at the opening of Parliament and called for the immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and to oppose any attack on Iran. They never declared the march legal but allowed it to go ahead. My understanding is that the world against war demonstration on March 15th two weeks ago also did not have the permission of the state but they chose at this time not to ban it.  This shows the depths to which the ruling circles are sinking in order to pursue their pro-war programme but more importantly it shows that the people will not tolerate these attacks on their right to take a stand against war and occupation. 

Can I just mention what I think the significance of the national Stop the War movement and its conference last year and subsequent events that have been organised this year by the national movement and on Tyneside.  It shows democracy is taking shape in the movement in the form that the state has no legitimacy in trying to ban our demonstrations and that conference gave a warning on any further attempts to stop our right to demonstrate opposition to their wars and occupations.

Secondly, conference also gave a warning against attempts by the government to support an attack on Iran. In fact, I think this was probably its greatest contribution in that it clearly reflected the resolve of the British people to oppose any attack on Iran by this Anglo-US Alliance or to engage in any demonisation of Iran as part of these war preparations.

Thirdly, the conference condemned the US and British government for the millions they have slaughtered in this "war on terror", as well as the atrocities and torture, and attacks on civil liberties and rights of the people at home.

Since the last AGM of Tyneside Stop the War Coalition we have organised a number of important events with the view to strengthening the coalition in the north east area.  It has not just been about national events important as they are. In this period we have seen the growth and continuation of the work of peace groups and anti-war groups in the north east area.  Work we know about has been ongoing in Hexham, South Tyneside, Durham, Whitley Bay, Berwick and Sunderland. 

As always, it has been important to maintain a strong Tyneside Stop the War Coalition. We have met every month either in the form of steering group or general discussion meetings. At the beginning of last year we organised a successful public meeting in Newcastle on the 6th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq – Don’t attack Iran and troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan, there was a die in July and that was followed by what we called an autumn of resistance. On September 17th the NUS and students withdrew the right of the TA to attend the fresher fare and Newcastle College. On October 21st there was a successful anti-war concert - end occupations. On November 14th this was followed by a protest against Blair’s visit to South Shields. 
  
Since the last AGM we have run regular Saturday stalls.  These stalls have continued to keep the stop the war agenda firmly in the eye of the people of Tyneside.  But apart from that they have had an even more important effect.   As you will hear about particularly over this period there has been an attempt to suppress the stalls by the local authorities. They have used the excuse of the bye laws on street collections to try and stop stalls at the monument.   However, inspite of all this we have maintained regular stalls when we have needed to and nobody should be discouraged from attending the stalls because they are well organised.  In terms of finance this is one source of funds but not the main source. 
 
What has been the stalls main contribution? Over the last year we have collected thousands of signatures against the war.   If we have the numbers we will give them to you but what the stall has shown time and time again is how many people are opposed to the pro-war programme.   In particular, we can remark on the number of working class women whose sons, or daughter, are in the armed forces and who vehemently oppose them being sent abroad either as invaders, or as occupiers.    This has reaffirmed to us over and over again that this is a broad coalition of people who are against the war and who want peace.
Coming onto what I think the stalls most important contribution has been over this year we have to look at two years ago.  Basically we had a small email list that we had no control over as a coalition.  It was an autonomous discussion list but not very active of around 50 people had been involved since the start of the coalition.  We decided to create a new list as an urgent priority. Through the stall literally hundreds of signed up to get on the Tyneside Stop the War Coalition mailing list. This list now stands at around 600 people many new people from all walks of life and with youth very well represented.
   
Firstly, this list has become crucial for the Stop the War Coalition getting its message across in the north east and opposing the disinformation of the mass media. 

Secondly it has become a vital for organising and mobilising people especially at short notice and when events unfold.    When Israel carried out its outrageous attack on Lebanon in 2006 500 people attended the rally against the war many through the email list that existed then. The Anglo US alliance has been unable to carry further such obvious aggression since then but more recent events have also demonstrated the importance of this in mobilising people such as the Moazzam Begg meeting being one example. 

We have work to do to improve this. We have paid attention especially for this agm to mailing lists for the trade unions and churches for example but I think that this needs to be organised and systematised so has to better organise ourselves as a broad coalition. Similarly, we need to solve the problem of a website. 
Returning to the stall we have to also decide how to take this forward. In recent times it has tended to fall on too few people and particularly one person.  We need to look at why we have the stall and what aim it has.  Clearly the petition programme has run its course for now.  Most people have signed the petition several times over. So, how do we take the stall work forward.   It think the stall is important but it needs all our support on how to improve it and make it effective in our present work.

We said that the present steering Committee would not pre-discuss any agenda other than to report on the work and organising the AGM. We organised the agm with the aim of reaffirming the broad character of the anti-war movement on Tyneside.  That does not mean necessarily that we are expecting everyone and all the organisations who have been involved, or who taking an anti-war stand to attend this meeting or that even all of those active at our events will attend. It means that we are reaffirming the Tyneside Stop the War coalition as a broad inclusive coalition of all the anti-war forces and  this is a project that we took up at the beginning of the year. It is up this AGM how this should continue and be further developed. 
 
The agenda for the AGM is open to the meeting decide and you will set this agenda and  decide how the Tyneside Stop the War Coalition conducts its affairs and what arrangements should be put in place over the coming year.

As Convenor/chair since the last AGM I have reported on the work of the coalition so it is now down to all of us to elect a chair for the AGM and propose the agenda.

Roger Nettleship

662

Newcastle Stop the War / Next Meeting

« on: November 29, 2008, 10:40:16 PM »

 The next Tyneside Stop the War Monthly Meeting will be at 6.30 pm Monday, December 8, at the Muslim Welfare House, 6 North Terrace, Newcastle.
 
 

663

Newcastle Stop the War / Peaceful Xmas Vigil Outside BAE Systems

« on: November 28, 2008, 07:32:01 AM »

Peaceful Xmas Vigil Outside BAE Systems

Armstrong Works, Scotswood Road, Newcastle
(Next to Scotswood Bridge)

7.30am, Wednesday 3rd December
Dress In Black If Possible
Directions/Enquiries: 0771 994 6814

www.stopwar.org.uk
www.northeaststopwar.org.uk
www.caat.org.uk

CAAT supporters and anti-war activists are planning to demonstrate
against the 'arms trade' outside BAe Systems Newcastle works, in the
form of a vigil remembering the number of children killed by
armaments in a decade - 2 million!

We plan a silent Xmas vigil, dressed in black for mourning. Our next
proposed date is for December 3rd, 7:30am, outside the factory. It
will probably go on for between half an hour to an hour, depending
on weather. It's not necessary to stay for the full time. This has
been a joint exercise with Tyneside Stop The War, we have made an
appropriate banner and we hope to repeat the demo.

BAe Systems (formerly Vickers Armstrong) is in Scotswood, next to
the Scotswood Bridge (Chain Bridge). Buses can be caught from the
Central Station. The factory's on the left near the river, a long
building.

We hope you might join us!

CAAT / Tyneside Stop The War

664

South Tyneside Stop the War / Forward to our Forum in the New Year!

« on: November 27, 2008, 11:01:27 PM »

We are now talking about organising the forum in the new year. I think it
is important to focus it on making preparations to block the new
arrangements for another pro-war government and focus on our agenda
of an anti-war government and standing anti-war candidates.  Firstly, to
bring together all those who actively supported and took a stand at the
last election in the borough on this basis.   

As we consider this you can see the sinister events which are being
promoted as a new 9/11 which are being unfolded in India to line people
up behind Obama and Biden to step up the war in Afghanistan and
spread it to Pakistan. 

As we consider this you can see in Miliband the foreign secretary visit to
the Congo the stepped up interference in Africa and the genocide that
massacres that are being carried out to depopulate countries to give
maximum access to steal their natural resources.

As we consider this you can see the stepped up militaristation here, the
preparations for war and plans to suppress the population here and
economic bondage and other unthinkable contingencies of the
government to protect the very rich.   

These are the things that must make people bring forward their own anti-
war candidates and in our case building on the experience and
successes of the last election. However, this time we need to make
preparations in good time and I think a forum that focuses on this and
brings together anti-war forces that were able to make headway on this
at the last election is imperative to this discussion.

It is also important  that a focused discussion on this is taken out widely
into the collectives of the workers and the people and the Forum can
both act to bring people in and as a spring board to take this out with a
new issue of  Silence is Shame and speakers.

Forward to the Forum in the New Year!

665

News Items / The International Backers of the Mumbai Attacks

« on: November 27, 2008, 09:22:46 PM »

The International Backers of the Mumbai Attacks

November 26, 2008, Axis of Logic - Reuters states that at least 80 people have been killed and that, "An organisation calling itself the Deccan Mujahideen claimed it was behind attacks". CNN television is already stating as fact that the Mumbai attacks were funded and supported by foreign sources, implicating Pakistan where President-elect Obama promised to take the so-called "war on terrorism" when he assumes office in January. The attacks which are on-going at this moment set the stage for redeployment of U.S. troops from Iraq to Pakistan as Obama promised. George W. Bush has been quick to condemn the attacks and CNN is giving round-the-clock coverage, reminiscent of corporate media coverage of the 9/11 attacks in the United States.

Linking Pakistan, Al-Queda, Muslims and Terrorism

CNN, Reuters and other corporate media immediately called these attacks with bombs, automatic weapons and hand grenades "terrorist attacks" emanating from Pakistan with roots in "Al Queda" and "Islamist Terrorists". CNN TV also states that these attacks target "western business people and well-heeled western tourists", staying at Mumbai's luxury hotels. The Deccan Herald states that the Deccan Mujahideen claimed responsibility via a convenient e-mail message received by the Deccan Herald (DC). DC states,
"The term itself (Deccan Mujahideen) is not very specific, and according to CNN may just be a generic term for radicals in the region. 'Deccan' is an area of India and 'Mujahideen' is the plural form of a term referring to a Muslim participating in a jihad."
Associated Press described the attackers,
"Teams of heavily armed gunmen stormed luxury hotels, a popular restaurant and a crowded train station in coordinated attacks across India's financial capital Wednesday night, killing at least 78 people and taking Westerners hostage, police said. A group of suspected Muslim militants claimed responsibility."
Reuters describes them, "The previously unknown or little known group sent an email to news organisations claiming responsibility." This is a familiar attribution to "terrorist attacks" which, because the organisation is "unknown", noone can prove otherwise. CNN TV states emphatically, "This is definitely an international attack using domestic terrorists". We have no doubt that the latter statement is true but the question is, "Who are those international backers of these attacks?"

International backing and support

Modern criminal investigation still rests on the Aristotile's 3 equally important causal factors: Means, Method and Motivation.

Factor analysis - Means, Method and Motivation: Powerful western media organisations reinforce their opinions with repetition, linking assaults like these with former "Islamist attacks" and another "terrorist attack". Their logic and factor analysis use (1) the weapons used, (2) the similarity of past attacks by "Al Queda" and (3) motivation. But of course they never consider the possibility, based on this same factor analysis, that the architects may be the CIA and/or Mossad.

Means: That the most powerful military machine in the world has the means to arm groups like the one who is carrying out the Mumbai attacks requires no apology or defense.

Method: History is replete with examples of U.S./Israeli use of a surrogate to attack their enemies. William John Fox pointed this out in his exemplary analysis, Deliver Us From Chaos: Ten Political Commandments. In 1953 they used domestic terrorism to overthrow Mohammad Mosaddeq, former Prime Minister of Iran. They used the Afghan Mujahideen to attack Russia in the same year of their resistance. The CIA and the U.S. ambassador secretly engineered the "Rose Revolution" in Georgia in 2003 and "the U.S. encouraged the Israeli-trained Georgian army to invade the disputed enclave of South Ossetia five years later".

Motivation: The only difference between the factors used by the capitalist media and ours is motivation. Regarding motivation, CNN states "they (Deccan Mujahideen) want to create as much damage and attention to themselves as possible". CIA/Mossad are masters at destruction, but the last thing they want is bringing attention to themselves. Motivation for the U.S. to take it's war to Pakistan fits perfectly with these attacks. As a matter of fact, Barack Obama and Joe Biden already declared their intention to take the war to Pakistan and stated with certainty that Obama's "mettle would be tested" by a major international "incident" in the near future. If the perpetrators want to draw attention to themselves, their method (i.e. killing civilians), simply does not make sense unless one buys the Bush regime's religion-based simplism that they are simply "evil". Militant's fighting for causes such as independence or national sovereignty want least of all, international negative attention or popular hatred. The only thing missing from the corporate media explanation is George W. Bush's idiotic claim that "the terrorists are jealous of our freedoms". Using this the corporate media's methodology, it is entirely reasonable and just as easy to implicate the CIA and Mossad.

Terrorism

We must also remember where the very term, "terrorism" was born in 1947 and who carried it out? - Israel. The term has been internationalised and popularised since then by the corporate media, rarely if ever pointing to its origins. Today, "terrorism" has become a household term, associated solely with Muslims throughout the world and it was developed into a basis for a war without end. The military assault on Mumbai is another a mini-9/11 in the sense that it provides a platform for juicing and expanding the "anti-terror" war under a new Obama administration which will no doubt be backed by other western governments.

Criminal Investigation

CNN tells us that the FBI has offered to help investigate the crime. The question is whether their interest is real investigation or damage control. If the FBI uses this time worn formula it could very easily end up evidence pointing to their own government. Were the FBI to "discover" CIA or Mossad involvement can any sane person expect they would reveal their findings to the public? Using "means, method and motivation" analysis, our "criminal investigation" leads to the CIA and Mossad as perpetrators of this event.

- Les Blough, Editor
Axis of Logic

© Copyright 2008 by AxisofLogic.com
 
 

666

South Tyneside Stop the War / Brain Dead.

« on: November 27, 2008, 06:08:00 PM »

Brain Dead.
I told myself --I am too tired to blog tonight. But this I could not, not write about...

They say there has been a Brain Drain in Iraq since its "liberation" - And I say there has been a DELIBERATE brain drain through MURDER. I said it in my early posts when talking about Academics in Iraq. A planned, voluntary, deliberate, program of targeted ASSASSINATIONS of Iraq's intelligentsia, intellectuals, thinkers, academics, artists, scientists, doctors, teachers...

WHY do you think this is so ? And WHO undertook this organized crime ? And for WHAT purpose ?

I did mention the culprits in the past. And I did state the long term objectives behind their heinous criminal acts. Do you remember ?

Let's see if you can come up with the right answers-- 5 years of "liberation" down the line.

And this is the list of names. I can already tell you it is incomplete. There are more names, many more names...

SEND THIS LIST TO THE DISGUSTING, DISGRACEFUL, "ARAB AND IRAQI" BLOGGERS , MEDIA AND THE REST -- WHO ARE SILENT ABOUT WHAT HAS REALLY HAPPENED AND IS HAPPENING TO IRAQ. AND SEAL IT WITH A SPIT FROM LAYLA ANWAR. AND EVEN THAT WOULD BE A WASTE OF SALIVA. AND SMEAR THEIR FACES WITH IT UNTIL THE BLACK INK DRIPS IN SHAME...

AND TAKE THIS LIST OF NAMES AND WIPE THE UGLY, DECEITFUL FACES OF EVERY SINGLE MOTHERFUCKER IN AMERICA, ENGLAND, IRAN AND ISRAEL. SMEAR THEIR FACES WITH THE NAMES OF THE DEAD ONES, UNTIL THE BLACK INK DRIPS ALONG, JUST THE WAY OUR BLOOD AND TEARS DRIPPED AND FLOODED...

THESE ARE THE DEAD IRAQI BRAINS -- MURDERED IRAQI LIBERATED BRAINS.

**************************************************

List of Iraqi academics assassinated in Iraq during the US-led occupation from Pakistan Daily via Uruknet.info.


The following relation has being created against the Occupation and for the Sovereignty of Iraq with the information provided by direct Iraqi university sources and international and Arab media. It only includes names and data referred to university academics assassinated during the Occupation period.

BAGHDAD, Baghdad University

Abbas Al-Attar: PhD in humanities, lecturer at Baghdad University’s College of Humanities.

Abdel Hussein Jabuk: PhD and lecturer at Baghdad University.

Abdel Salam Saba: PhD in sociology, lecturer at Baghdad University.

Abdel Razak Al-Naas: Lecturer in information and international mass media at Baghdad University’s College of Information Sciences. He was a regular analyst for Arabic satellite TV channels. He was killed in his car at Baghdad University on 28 January 2005. His assassination led to confrontations between students and police, and journalists went on strike.

Ahmed Nassir Al-Nassiri: PhD in education sciences, Baghdad University, assassinated February 2005.

Ali Abdul-Hussein Kamil: PhD in physical sciences, lecturer in the Department of Physics, Baghdad University.

Amir Al-Jazragi: PhD in medicine, lecturer at Baghdad University’s College of Medicine, and consultant at the Iraqi Ministry of Health, assassinated 17 November 2005.

Basil Al-Karji: PhD in chemistry, lecturer at Baghdad University.

Essam Sharif Mohammed: PhD in history, professor in Department of History and head of the College of Humanities, Baghdad University.

Faidhi Al-Faidhi: PhD in education sciences, lecturer at Baghdad University and Al-Munstansiriya University. He was also member of the Muslim Scientists Committee. Assassinated in 2005.

Fuad Abrahim Mohammed Al-Bayaty: PhD in german philology, professor and head of College of Philology, Baghdad University.

Haifa Alwan Al-Hil: PhD in physics, lecturer at Baghdad University’s College of Science for Women.

Heikel Mohammed Al-Musawi: PhD in medicine, lecturer at Al-Kindi College of Medicine, Baghdad University. Assassinated 17 November 2005.

Hassan Abd Ali Dawood Al-Rubai: PhD in stomatology, dean of the College of Stomatology, Baghdad University. Assassinated 20 December 2005.

Hazim Abdul Hadi: PhD in medicine, lecturer at the College of Medicine, Baghdad University.

Khalel Ismail Abd Al-Dahri: PhD in physical education, lecturer at the College of Physical Education, Baghdad University.

Kilan Mahmoud Ramez: PhD and lecturer at Baghdad University.

Maha Abdel Kadira: PhD and lecturer at Baghdad University’s College of Humanities.

Majed Nasser Hussein Al-Maamoori: Professor of veterinary medicine at Baghdad University’s College of Veterinary Medicine. Assassinated 17 February 2007.

Marwan Al-Raawi: PhD in engineering and lecturer at Baghdad University.

Marwan Galeb Mudhir Al-Heti: PhD in chemical engineering and lecturer at the School of Engineering, Baghdad University.

Majed Hussein Ali: PhD in physical sciences and lecturer at the College of Sciences, Baghdad University.

Mehned Al-Dulaimi: PhD in mechanical engineering, lecturer at Baghdad University.

Mohammed Falah Al-Dulaimi: PhD in physical sciences, lecturer at Baghdad University.

Mohammed Tuki Hussein Al-Talakani: PhD in physical sciences, nuclear scientist since 1984, and lecturer at Baghdad University.

Mohammed Al-Kissi: PhD and lecturer at Baghdad University.

Mohammed Abd Allah Al-Raawi: PhD in surgery, former president of Baghdad University, member of the Arab Council of Medicine and of the Iraqi Council of Medicine, president of the Iraqi Union of Doctors.

Mohammed Al-Jazairi: PhD in medicine and plastic surgeon, College of Medicine, Baghdad Univeristy. Assassinated 15 November 2005.

Mustafa Al-Hity: PhD in medicine, paediatrician, College of Medicine, Baghdad University. Assassinated 14 November 2005.

Mustafa Al-Mashadani: PhD in religious studies, lecturer in Baghdad University’s College of Humanities.

Nafea Ahmmoud Jalaf: PhD in Arabic language, professor in Baghdad University’s College of Humanities.

Nawfal Ahmad: PhD, lecturer at Baghdad University’s College of Fine Arts. She was assassinated at the front door of her house on 25 December 2005.

Nazar Abdul Amir Al-Ubaidy: PhD and lecturer at Baghdad University.

Raad Shlash: PhD in biological sciences, head of Department of Biology at Baghdad University’s College of Sciences. He was killed at the front door of his house on 17 November 2005.

Rafi Sarcisan Vancan: Bachelor of English language, lecturer at Baghdad University’s College of Women’s Studies.

Saadi Daguer Morab: PhD in fine arts, lecturer at Baghdad University’s College of Fine Arts.

Sabri Mustafa Al-Bayaty: PhD in geography, lecturer at Baghdad University’s College of Humanities.

Saad Yassin Al-Ansari: PhD and lecturer at Baghdad University. He was killed in Al-Saydiya neighborhood, Baghdad, 17 November 2005.

Wannas Abdulah Al-Naddawi: PhD in education sciences, Baghdad University. Assassinated 18 February 2005.

Yassim Al-Isawi: PhD in religious studies, Baghdad University’s College of Arts. Assassinated 21 June 2005.

Zaki Jabar Laftah Al-Saedi: Bachelor of veterinary medicine, lecturer at Baghdad University’s College of Veterinary Medicine.

Basem Al-Modarres: PhD and lecturer at Baghdad University’s College of Philosophy. [Source: Al-Hayat, 28 February 2006.]

Jasim Mohammed Achamri: Dean of College of Philosophy, Baghdad University. [Source: Al-Hayat, 28 February 2006.]

Hisham Charif: Head of Department of History and lecturer at Baghdad University. [Source: Al-Hayat, 28 February 2006.]

Qais Hussam Al-Den Jumaa: Professor and Dean of College of Agriculture, Baghdad University. Killed 27 March 2006 by US soldiers in downtown Baghdad. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university source.]

Mohammed Yaakoub Al-Abidi: Baghdad University. Department and college unknown. [Source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers report, March 2006.]

Abdelatif Attai: Baghdad University. Department and college unknown. [Source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers report, March 2006.]

Ali Al-Maliki: Baghdad University. Department and college unknown. [Source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers report, March 2006.]

Nafia Aboud: Baghdad University. Department and college unknown. [Source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers report, March 2006.]

Abbas Kadem Alhachimi: Baghdad University. Department and college unknown. [Source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers report, March 2006.]

Mouloud Hasan Albardar Aturki: Lecturer in Hanafi Teology at Al-Imam Al-Aadam College of Teology, Baghdad University. [Source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers report, March 2006.]

Riadh Abbas Saleh: Lecturer at Baghdad University’s Centre for International Studies. Killed 11 May 2006. [Source: CEOSI university source, 17 May 2006.]

Abbas Al-Amery: Professor and head of Department of Administration and Business, College of Administration and Economy, Baghdad University. Killed together with his son and one of his relatives at the main entrance to the College 16 May 2006. [Source: CEOSI university source, 17 May 2006.]

Muthana Harith Jasim: Lecturer at Baghdad University’s College of Engineering. Killed near his home in Al-Mansur, 13 June 2006. [Source: CEOSI university source, 13 June 2006.]

Hani Aref Al-Dulaimy: Lecturer in the Department of Computer Engineering, Baghdad University’s College of Engineering. He was killed, together with three of his students, 13 June 2006 on campus. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university source, 13 June 2006.]

Hussain Al-Sharifi: Professor of urinary surgery at Baghdad University’s College of Medicine. Killed in May 2006. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 12 June 2006.]

Hadi Muhammad Abub Al-Obaidi: Lecturer in the Department of Surgery, Baghdad University’s College of Medicine. Killed 19 June 2006. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university source, 20 June 2006.]

Hamza Shenian: Professor of veterinary surgery at Baghdad University’s College of Veterinary Medicine. Killed by armed men in his garden in a Baghdad neighborhood 21 June 2006. This was the first known case of a professor executed in the victim’s home. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 21 June 2006.]

Jassim Mohama Al-Eesaui: Professor at College of Political Sciences, Baghdad University, and editor of Al-Syada newspaper. He was 61 years old when killed in Al-Shuala, 22 June 2006. [Source: UNAMI report 1 May-30 June 2006.]

Shukir Mahmoud As-Salam: Lecturer at Baghdad University’s College of Medicine and dental surgeon at Al-Yamuk Hospital, Baghdad. Killed near his home by armed men 6 September 2006. [Source: TV news, As-Sharquia channel, 7 September 2006, and CEOSI Iraqi sources.]

Mahdi Nuseif Jasim: Professor in the Department of Petroleum Engineering at Baghdad University. Killed 13 September 2006 near the university. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university source.]

Adil Al-Mansuri: Maxillofacial surgeon and professor at the College of Medicine, Baghdad University. Kidnapped by uniformed men near Iban Al-Nafis Hospital in Baghdad. He was found dead with torture signs and mutilation in Sadr City. He was killed during a wave of assassinations in which seven medical specialists were assassinated. Date unknown: July or August 2006 [Source: Iraqi health service sources, 24 September 2006.]

Shukur Arsalan: Maxillofacial surgeon and professor at the College of Medicine, Baghdad University. Killed by armed men when leaving his clinic in Harziya neighbourhood. He was killed during a wave of assassinations in which seven specialists were assassinated. Date unknown: July or August 2006. [Source: Iraqi Health System sources, 24 September 2006.]

Issam Al-Rawi: Professor of geology at Baghdad University, president of the Association of University Professors of Iraq. Killed 30 October 2006 during an attack carried out by a group of armed men in which two more professors were seriously injured. [Sources: CEOSI sources and Associated Press.]

Yaqdan Sadun Al-Dhalmi: Professor and lecturer in the College of Education, Baghdad University. Killed 16 October 2006. [Source: CEOSI sources.]

Jlid Ibrahim Mousa: Professor and lecturer at Baghdad University’s College of Medicine. Killed by a group of armed men in September 2006. During August and September 2006, six professors of medicine were assassinated in Baghdad. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi sources.]

Mohammed Jassim Al-Thahbi and wife: Professor and dean of the College of Administration and Economy, Baghdad University. Killed 2 November 2006 by a group of armed men when he was driving to university. His wife, a lecturer at the same university (name and academic position unknown) and son were also killed in the attack. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi sources and Tme Magazine, 2 October 2006.]

Mohammed Mehdi Saleh: Lecturer at Baghdad University (unknown position) and member of the Association of Muslim Scholars. Imam of Ahl Al-Sufa Mosque in Al-Shurta Al-Jamisa neighbourhood. Killed 14 November 2006 while driving in the neighbourhood of Al-Amal in central Baghdad. [Source: UMA, 14 November 2006.]

Hedaib Majhol: Lecturer at College of Physical Education, Baghdad University, president of the Football University Club and member of the Iraqi Football Asociation. Kidnapped in Baghdad. His body was found three later in Baghdad morgue 3 December 2006. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 2 December 2006.]

Al-Hareth Abdul Hamid: Professor of psychiatric medicine and head of the Department of Psychology at Baghdad University. Former president of the Society of Parapsychological Investigations of Iraq. A renowned scientist, Abdul Hamid was shot dead in the neighbourhood of Al-Mansur, Baghdad, 6 December 2006 by unknown men. [Sources: CEOSI Iraqi sources, 6 December 2006, and Reuters, 30 January 2007.]

Anwar Abdul Hussain: Lecturer at the College of Odontology, Baghdad University. Killed in Haifa Street in Baghdad in the third week of January 2007. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 23 January 2007.]

Majed Nasser Hussain: PhD and lecturer at the College of Veterinary Medicine, Baghdad University. He was killed in front of his wife and daughter while leaving home in the third week of January 2007. Nasser Hussain had been kidnapped two years before and freed after paying a ransom. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 23 January 2007.]

Khaled Al-Hassan: Professor and deputy dean of the College of Political Sciences, Baghdad University. Killed in March 2007. [Source: Association of University Lecturers of Iraq, 7 April 2007.]

Ali Mohammed Hamza: Professor of Islamic Studies at Baghdad University. Department and college unknown. Killed 17 April 2007. [Sources: TV channels As-Sharquia and Al-Jazeera.]

Abdulwahab Majed: Lecturer at Baghdad University’s College of Education. Department and college unknown. Killed 2 May 2007. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 5 May 2007.]

Sabah Al-Taei: Deputy dean of the College of Education, Baghdad University. Killed 7 May 2007. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources. 8 May 2007.]

Nihad Mohammed Al-Rawi: Professor of Civil Engineering and deputy president of Baghdad University. Shot dead 26 June 2007 in Al-Jadria Bridge, a few meters away from the university campus, when exiting with his daughter Rana, whom he protected from the shots with his body. [Sources: BRussells Tribunal and CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 26-27 June 2007, www.wmin.ac.uk]

Muhammad Kasem Al-Jebouri: Lecturer at the College of Agriculture, Baghdad University. Killed, together with his son and his brother-in-law, by paramilitary forces 22 June 2007. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 27 June 2007.]

Samir (surname unknown): Lecturer at Baghdad University’s College of Administration and Economy. His body was found shot one day after being kidnapped in Kut where he was visiting family. Professor Samir lived in the Baghdad district of Al-Sidiya. [Source: Voices of Iraq, www.iraqslogger.com, 29 June 2007.]

Amin Abdul Aziz Sarhan: Lecturer at Baghdad University. Department and college unknown. He was kidnapped from his home in Basra by unidentified armed men 13 October 2007 and found dead on the morning of 15 October. [Source: Voices of Iraq, 15 October 2007.]

Mohammed Kadhem Al-Atabi: Head of Baghdad University’s Department of Planning and Evaluation. He was kidnapped 18 October 2007 from his home in Baghdad by a group of armed men and found dead a few hours later in the area of Ur, near to Sadr City, which is under the control of Moqtada Al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 26 October 2007.]

Munther Murhej Radhi: Dean of the College of Odontology, Baghdad University. He was found dead in his car 23 January 2008. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 24 January 2008.]

Mundir Marhach: Dean of Faculty of Stomatology, Baghdad University. He was killed in March (exact day unknown), according to information provided by the Centre for Human Rights of Baghdad. [Source: Al-Basrah reported 12 March 2008.]

Al-Mamoon Faculty (private college, Baghdad)

Mohammed Al-Miyahi: Dean of Al-Maamoun Faculty in Baghdad. He was shot with a silencer-equipped gun in front of his house in Al-Qadisiah district, southern Baghdad, as he stepped out of his car 14 December 2007. [Source CEOSI Iraqi source and Kuwait News Agency, reported 19 December 2007, IPS reported 19 December 2007, and Al-Basrah, reported 12 March 2008.]


Al-Mustansiriya University (Baghdad)

Aalim Abdul Hameed: PhD in preventive medicine, specialist in depleted uranium effects in Basra, dean of the College of Medicine, Al-Mustansiriya University.

Abdul Latif Al-Mayah: PhD in economics, lecturer and head of Department of Research, Al-Mustansiriya University.

Aki Thakir Alaany: PhD and lecturer at the College of Literature, Al-Mustansiriya University.

Falah Al-Dulaimi: PhD, professor and deputy dean of Al-Mustansiriya University’s College of Sciences.

Falah Ali Hussein: PhD in physics, lecturer and deputy dean of the College of Sciences, Al-Mustansiriya University, killed May 2005.

Musa Saloum Addas: PhD, lecturer and deputy dean of the College of Educational Sciences, Al-Mustansiriya University, killed 27 May 2005.

Husam Al-Ddin Ahmad Mahmmoud: PhD in education sciences, lecturer and dean at College of Education Sciences, Al-Mustansiriya University.

Jasim Abdul Kareem: PhD and lecturer at the College of the Education, Al-Mustansiriya University.

Abdul As Satar Sabar Al Khazraji: PhD in history, Al Munstansiriya University, killed 19 June 2005. [A same name and surname lecturer in Engineering at the College of Computer Science Technology, Al-Nahrein University was assessinated in March 2006.]

Samir Yield Gerges: PhD and lecturer at the College of Administration and Economy at Al-Mustansiriya University, killed 28 August 2005.

Jasim Al-Fahaidawi: PhD and lecturer in Arabic literature at the College of Humanities, Al-Mustansiriya University. Assassinated at the university entrance. [Source: BBC News, 15 November 2005.]

Kadim Talal Hussein: Deputy dean of the College of Education, Al-Mustansiriya University.

Mohammed Nayeb Al-Qissi: PhD in geography, lecturer at Department of Research, Al-Mustansiriya University.

Sabah Mahmoud Al-Rubaie: PhD in geography, lecturer and dean at College of Educational Sciences, Al-Mustansiriya University.

Ali Hasan Muhawish: Dean and lecturer at the College of Engineering, Al-Mustansiriya University. Killed 12 March 2006. [Source: Middle East Online, 13 March 2006.]

Imad Naser Alfuadi: Lecturer at the College of Political Sciences, Al-Mustansiriya University. [Source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers report, March 2006.]

Mohammed Ali Jawad Achami: President of the College of Law, Al-Mustansiriya University. [Source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers report, March 2006.]

Husam Karyakus Tomas: Lecturer at the College of Medicine, Al-Mustansiriya University. [Source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers report, March 2006.]

Basem Habib Salman: Lecturer at the College of Medicine at Al-Mustansiriya University. [Source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers report, March 2006.]

Mohammed Abdul Rahman Al-Ani: PhD in engineering, lecturer at the College of Law, Al-Mustansiriya University. Kidnapped, together with his friend Akrem Mehdi, 26 April 2006, at his home in Palestine Street, Baghdad. Their bodys were found two days later. (CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 5 May 2006.]

Jasim Fiadh Al-Shammari: Lecturer in psychology at the College of Arts, Al-Mustansiriya Baghdad University. Killed near campus 23 May 2006. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university source, 30 May 2006.]

Saad Mehdi Shalash: PhD in history and lecturer in history at the College of Arts, Al-Mustansiriya University, and editor of the newspaper Raya Al-Arab. Shot dead at his home with his wife 26 October 2006. [Source: Al-Quds Al-Arabi, 27 October 2006.]

Kemal Nassir: Professor of history and lecturer at Al-Mustansiriya and Bufa universities. Killed at his home in Baghdad in October 2006. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 2 November 2006.]

Hasseb Aref Al-Obaidi: Professor in the College of Political Sciences at Al-Mustansiriya University. Since he was kidnapped 22 October 2006 his whereabouts is unknown. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources.]

Najeb Al-Salihi: Lecturer in the College of Psychology at Al-Mustansiriya University and head of the Scientific Commitee of the Ministry of Higher Education of Iraq. Al-Salihi, 39 years old, was kidnapped close to campus and his body, shot dead, was found 20 days after his disappearance in Baghdad morgue. His family was able recover his body only after paying a significant amount of money. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources.]

Dhia Al-Deen Mahdi Hussein: Professor of international criminal law at the College of Law, Al-Mustansiriya University. Missing since kidnapped from his home in the Baghdad neighborhood of Dhia in 4 November 2006 by a group of armed men driving police cars. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 5 November 2006.]

Muntather Al-Hamdani: Deputy dean of the College of Law, Al-Mustansiriya University. He was assassinated, together with Ali Hassam, lecturer at the same college, 20 December 2006. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 24 December 2006. The Iraqi police identified Ali Arnoosi as the deputy dean assassinated 21 December, and Mohammed Hamdani as another victim. It is unknown whether [Muntanther Al-Hamdani and Mohammed Hamdani] both are the same case or not.]

Ali Hassam: Lecturer at the College of Law at Al-Mustansiriya University. He was killed together with Muntather Al-Hamdani, deputy dean of the college, 20 December 2006. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 24 December 2006. The Iraqi police identified Ali Arnoosi as the deputy dean assassinated 21 December, and Mohammed Al-Hamdani as another victim. It is unknown whether both [Muntanther Al-Hamdani and Mohammed Hamdani] are the same case or not.]

Dhia Al-Mguter: Professor of economy at the College of Administration and Economy of Al-Mustansiriya University. He was killed 23 January 2007 in Baghdad while driving. He was a prominent economist and president of the Consumer’s Defense Association and the Iraqi Association of Economists. A commentator at for As-Sharquia television, he participated in the Maram Committee, being responsible for investigating irregularities occuring during the elections held in January 2006. Al-Mguter was part of a family with a long anti-colonialist tradition since the British occupation. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources and Az-Zaman newspaper, 24 January 2007.]

Ridha Abdul Hussein Al-Kuraishi: Deputy Dean of the University of Al-Mustansiriya’s College of Administration and Economy. He was kidnapped 28 March 2007 and found dead the next day. [Source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers, 7 April 2007. See the Arabic letter sent to CEOSI.].


University of Technology (Baghdad)

Muhannad Al-Dulaimi: PhD in mechanical engineering, lecturer at the Baghdad University of Technology.

Muhey Hussein: PhD in aerodynamics, lecturer in the Department of Mechanical Engineering of the Baghdad University of Technology.

Qahtan Kadhim Hatim: Bachelor of sciences, lecturer in the College of Engineering of the Baghdad University of Technology.

Sahira Mohammed Machhadani: Baghdad University of Technology. Department and college unknown. [Source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers, March 2006.]

Ahmed Ali Husein: Lecturer at the Baghdad University of Technology, specialist in applied mechanics. He was killed by a group of armed men in downtown Baghdad 22 May 2006. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 24 May 2006.]

Name unknown: Lecturer at Baghdad University of Technology. Killed 27 June 2006 by a group of armed men. They were driving a vehicle in the Baghdad neighborhood of Al-Mansur and shot him without stopping. Next day, students and professors staged demonstrations in all universities across the country opposing the assassination and kidnapping of professors and lecturers. [Source: Al-Jazeera and Jordan Times, 27 June 2006.]

Ali Kadhim Ali: Professor at Baghdad University of Technology. Shot dead in November 2006 in the district of Al-Yarmuk by a group of armed men. His wife, Dr Baida Obeid —gynecologist — was also killed in the attack. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi sources, 16 November 2006.]

Moa’ayed Jasim Al-Janabi: Lecturer in physics at Baghdad University of Technology. Killed 23 May 2006. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, December 2006.]

Jalil Enjad Al-Jumaily: Lecturer at University of Technology. Department and college unknown. He was killed 22 December 2006 with his son, a physician, after being kidnapped. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 24 December 2006..]

Abdul Same’e Al-Janabi: Deputy president of the Baghdad University of Technology. Missing after being kidnapped during the third week of January 2007. In 2004, Abdul Sami Al-Janabi was dean of Al-Mustansiriya University’s College of Sciences in Baghdad. He resigned from this position after Shia paramilitary forces threatened to kill him. Such forces began then to occupy university centres in the capital. Transferred by the Ministry of Higher Education to a new position to preserve his security, Sami Al-Janabi has almost certainly been assassinated. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 23 January 2007.]

Ameer Mekki Al-Zihairi: Lecturer at Baghdad University of Technology. He was killed in March 2007. [Source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers, 7 April 2007.


Al-Nahrein University (Baghdad.]

Akil Abdel Jabar Al-Bahadili: Professor and deputy dean of Al-Nahrein University’s College of Medicine. Head of Adhamiya Hospital in Baghdad. He was a specialist in internal medicine, killed 2 December 2005.

Mohammed Al-Jazairy: Lecturer at University College Al-Kadhemiya Hospital, Al-Nahrein University. He was a specialist in plastic surgery.

Layth Abdel Aziz: PhD and lecturer at the College of Sciences, Al-Nahrein University. [Source: Al-Hayat, 28 February 2006.]

Abdul As Satar Sabar Al-Khazrayi: Lecturer in engineering at the College of Computer Science Technology, Al-Nahrein University. [Source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers report, March 2006.] [A same name and surname PhD in History at Al Munstansiriya University was killed on 19 June 2005.]

Uday Al-Beiruti: Professor at Al-Nahrein University. Kidnapped in University College Al-Kadhemiya Hospital’s parking lot by armed men dressed in Interior Ministry uniforms. His body was found with sigs of torture in Sadr City. Date unknown: July/August 2006. His murder took place during a wave of assassinations in which seven of his colleagues were killed. [Source: Iraqi health service sources, 24 September 2006.]

Jalil Al-Jumaili: Professor at the College of Medicine, Al-Nahrein University. He was found shot dead in December 2006 (exact date unknown) after being kidnapped at University College Al-Kadhemiya Hospital, together with his son, Dr Anas Al-Jumaili, lecturer at the same college. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 24 December 2006.]

Anas Al-Jumaili: Lecturer at the College of Medicine, Al-Nahrein University. He was found shot dead in December (exact date unknown) with his father, Dr Jalil Al-Jumaili, professor of medicine, after being kidnapped at University College Al-Kadhemiya Hospital. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 24 December 2006.]

Adnan Mohammed Saleh Al-Aabid: Lecturer at the College of Law, Al-Nahrein University. He was found dead 31 January 2007 after having been kidnapped from his home 28 January 2007 together with lecturers Abdul Mutaleb Abdulrazak Al-Hashimi and Aamer Kasem Al-Kaisy, and a student. All were found dead in Baghdad morgue. [Sources: CEOSI Iraqi university sources and Al-Quds Al-Arabi, 1 February 2007.]

Abdul Mutaleb Abdulrazak Al-Hashimi: Lecturer at the College of Law, Al-Nahrein University. He was found dead 31 January 2007 after having been kidnapped 28 January 2007 on his way home, together with lecturers Adnan Mohammed Saleh Al-Aabid and Aamer Kasem Al-Kaisy, and a student. All were found dead in Baghdad morgue. [Sources: CEOSI Iraqi university sources and Al-Quds Al-Arabi, 1 February 2007.]

Aamer Kasem Al-Kaisy: Lecturer at the College of Law, Al-Nahrein University. He was found dead 31 January 2007 after having been kidnapped on his way home 28 January 2007, together with a student and lecturers Abdul Mutaleb Abdulrazak Al-Hashimi and Adnan Mohammed Saleh Al-Aabid. All were found dead in Baghdad morgue. [Sources: CEOSI Iraqi university sources and Al-Quds Al-Arabi, 1 February 2007.]

Khaled Al-Naieb: Lecturer in microbiology and deputy dean of Al-Nahrein University’s College of Higher Studies in Medicine. Killed 30 March 2007 at the main entrance to the college. Having been threatened by the Mahdi Army, Moqtada Al-Sadr’s militia, Dr Al-Naieb had moved to work in Irbil. During a brief visit to his family in Baghdad, and after recently becoming a father, he was killed at the main entrance to the college on his way to collect some documents. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 4 April 2007. Iraqi Association of University Lecturers report dated 7 April 2007.]

Sami Sitrak: Professor of English and dean of Al-Nahrein University’s College of Law. Professor Sitrak was killed 29 March 2007. He had been appointed dean of the College after the former dean’s resignation following an attempt to kill him along with three other College lecturers. [Source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers, 7 April 2007.].

Thair Ahmed Jebr: Lecturer in the Department of Physics, College of Sciences, Al-Nahrein University. Jebr was killed in the attack against satellite TV channel Al-Baghdadiya 5 April 2007. [Source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers, 7 April 2007.].

Iyad Hamza: PhD in chemistry, Baghdad University. He was the academic assistant of the President of Al-Nahrein University. On 4 May 2008 he was killed near his home in Baghdad. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi source. 6 May 2008.].

Islamic University (Baghdad)

Haizem Al-Azawi: Lecturer at Baghdad Islamic University. Department and college unknown. He was 35 years old and married and was killed 13 February 2006 by armed men when he ariving home in the neighborhood of Habibiya. [Source: Asia Times, 3 March 2006.]

Saadi Ahmad Zidaan Al-Fahdawi: PhD in Islamic science, lecturer at the College of Islamic Science, Baghdad University. Killed 26 March 2006.

Abdel Aziz Al-Jazem: Lecturer in Islamic theology at the College of Islamic Science, Baghdad University. [Source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers report, March 2006.]

Saad Jasim Mohammed: Lecturer at the Baghdad Islamic University. Department and college unknown. Killed, together with his brother Mohammed Jassim Mohammed, 11 May 2007 in the neighburghood of Al-Mansur. The armed men who commited the crime where identified by the Association of Muslims Scholars as members of a death squad. [Sources: Press note of the Association of Muslims Scholars, 12 May 2007, and CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 13 May 2007.]

Qais Sabah Al-Jabouri: Professor at the Baghdad Islamic University. Killed 7 June 2007 by a group of armed men who shot him from a car when he was leaving the university with the lecturers Alaa Jalel Essa and Saad Jalifa Al-Ani, who were killed and seriously injured respectively. press note of the Association of Muslims Scholars, 7 June 2007, and CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 9 June 2007.]

Alaa Jalel Essa: Professor at the Baghdad Islamic University. Killed 7 June 2007 by a group of armed men who shot him from a car when he was leaving the university with the lecturers Qais Sabah Al-Jabouri and Saad Jalifa Al-Ani, who were killed and seriously injured respectively. press note of the Association of Muslims Scholars, 7 June 2007, and CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 9 June 2007.]

Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education (Baghdad)

Lecturers killed after a mass kidnapping, 13 November 2006[4]:

Abdul Salam Suaidan Al-Mashhadani: Lecturer in political sciences and head of the scholarships section of the Ministry of Higher Education. He was kidnapped 13 November 2006 in an assault on the ministry. His body was found with signs of torture and mutilation 24 November 2006. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 26 November 2006.]

Abdul Hamid Al-Hadizi: Professor (speciality unknown). He was kidnapped 13 November 2006 in an assault on the ministry. His body was found with signs of torture and mutilation 24 November 2006. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 26 November 2006.]

Baghdad Institutes

Izi Al-Deen Al-Rawi: President of the Arabic University’s Institute of Petroleum, Industry and Minerals. Al-Rawi was kidnapped and found dead 20 November 2006. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 20 November 2006)


BABYLON
Hilla University

Jaled M Al-Janabi: PhD in Islamic history, lecturer in Hilla University’s School of Humanities.
Mohsin Suleiman Al-Ajeely: PhD in agronomy, lecturer in the College of Agronomy, Hilla University. Killed 24 December 2005.

Fleih Al-Gharbawi: Lecturer in the College of Medicine. Killed in Hilla (capital of the province of Babylon, 100 kilometers south of Baghdad) 20 November 2006 by armed men. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi sources, 20 November 2006.]

Ali Al-Grari (or Garar): Professor at Hilla University. He was shot dead 20 November 2006 by armed men in a vehicle on the freeway between Hilla and Baghdad. [Source: Iraqi police sources cited by Reuters, 20 November 2006,

AT-TAMIM - Kirkuk University

Ahmed Izaldin Yahya: Lecturer in the College of Engineering, Kirkuk University. Killed by a car bomb in the vicinity of his home in Kirkuk, 16 February 2007. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 17 February 2007.]

Hussein Qader Omar: professor and Dean of Kirkuk University’s College of Education Sciences. Killed in November 20, 2006 by shots made from a vehicle in the city center. An accompanying colleague was injured. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, November 21, 2006, and Iraqi Police Sources cited by Reuters, 20 November 2006.]

Sabri Abdul Jabar Mohammed: Lecturer at the College of Education Sciences at Kirkuk University. Found dead 1 November 2007 in a street in Kirkuk one day after being kidnapped by a group of unidentified armed men [Source: Iraqi university sources to the BRussells Tribunal and CEOSI, 2 November 2007.]

Abdel Sattar Tahir Sharif: Lecturer at Kirkuk University. Department and college unknown. 75-years-old, he was assassinated 5 March 2008 by armed men in the district of Shoraw, 10 kilometres northeast of Kirkuk. [Source: Aswat Al-Iraq/ Voices of Iraq, 5 March 2008.]


NINEVEH - Mosul University

Abdel Yabar Al-Naimi: Dean of Mosul University’s College of Humanities.

Abdul Yabar Mustafa: PhD in political sciences, dean of Mosul University’s College of Political Sciences.

Abdul Aziz El-Atrachi: PhD in plant protection in the College of Agronomy and Forestry, Mosul University.

Eman Abd-Almonaom Yunis: PhD in translation, lecturer in the College of Humanities, Mosul University.

Jaled Faisal Hamid Al-Shijo: PhD and lecturer in the College of Physical Education, Mosul University.

Leila Abdu Allah Al-Saad: PhD in law, dean of Mosul University’s College of Law.

Mahfud Al-Kazzaz: PhD and lecturer at University Mosul. Department and college unknown. Killed 20 November 2004.

Mohammed Yunis Thanun: Bachelor of sciences, lecturer in the College of Physical Education, Mosul University.

Munir Al-Jiero: PhD in law and lecturer in the College of Law, Mosul University. Married to Dr Leila Abdu Allah Al-Saad, also assassinated.

Noel Butrus S. Mathew: PhD, professor at the Health Institute of Mosul University.

Ahmad Hamid Al-Tai: Professor and head of Department of Medicine, Mosul University. Killed 20 November 2006 when armed men intercepted his vehicle as he was heading home. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 20 November 2006.]

Kamel Abdul Hussein: Lecturer and deputy dean of the College of Law, Mosul University. Killed 11 January 2007. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 23 January 2007.]

Talal Younis: Professor and dean of the College of Political Sciences. Killed on the morning of 16 April 2007 at the main entrance to the college. Within less than half an hour Professor Jaafer Hassan Sadeq of the Department of History at Mosul University was assassinated at his home. [Sources: CEOSI Iraqi university sources and Al-Mousl.]

Jaafer Hassan Sadeq: Professor in the Department of History of Mosul University’s College of Arts. Killed 16 April 2007 at home in the district of Al-Kafaaat, northwest of Mosul. Within less that half an hour, Professor Talal Younis, dean of Mosul University’s College of Political Sciences, was killed at the main entrance to the college. [Sources: CEOSI Iraqi university sources and Al-Mousl.]

Ismail Taleb Ahmed: Lecturer in the College of Education, Mosul University. Killed 2 May 2007 while on his way to college. [Source: Al-Mosul, 2 May 2007.]

Nidal Al-Asadi: Professor in the Computer Sciences Department of Mosul University’s College of Sciences. Shot dead by armed men in the district of Al-Muhandiseen, according to police sources in Mosul. [Sources: INA, 2 May 2007, and Iraqi sources to the BRussells Tribunal, 3 May 2007.]

Aziz Suleiman: Lecturer at Mosul University. Department of Mosul University’s College of Sociology. Killed in Mosul 22 January 2008. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 24 January 2008.].

Jalil Ibrahim Ahmed al-Naimi: Director of the 'Sharia’ Department (Islamic Law), Mosul University. He was shot dead by armed men when he came back home (in Mosul) from University, 30 January 2008. [Sources: CEOSI and BRussells Tribunal University Iraqi sources, al-Quds al-Arabi, 31 de enero de 2008.].

QADISIYA - Diwaniya University

Hakim Malik Al-Zayadi: PhD in Arabic philology, lecturer in Arabic literature at Al-Qadisyia University. Dr Al-Zayadi was born in Diwaniya, and was killed in Latifiya when he was traveling from Baghdad 24 July 2005.]

Mayed Husein: Physician and lecturer at the College of Medicine, Diwaniya University. [Source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers report, March 2006.]


BASRA - Basra University

Abdel Al-Munim Abdel Mayad: Bachelor and lecturer at Basra University.

Abdel Gani Assaadun: Bachelor and lecturer at Basra University.

Abdul Alah Al-Fadhil: PhD, professor and deputy dean of Basra University’s College of Medicine.

Abdul-Hussein Nasir Jalaf: PhD in agronomy, lecturer at the College of Agronomy’s Center of Research on Date Palm Trees, Basra University.

Alaa Daoud: PhD in sciences, professor and chairman of Basra University (also reported as a lecturer in history). Killed 20 July 2005.

Ali Galib Abd Ali: Bachelor of sciences, assistant professor at the School of Engineering, Basra University.

Asaad Salem Shrieda: PhD in engineering, professor and dean of Basra University’s School of Engineering.

Faysal Al-Assadi: PhD in agronomy, professor at the College of Agronomy, Basra University.

Gassab Jabber Attar: Bachelor of sciences, lecturer at the School of Engineering, Basra University.

Haidar Al-Baaj: PhD in surgery, head of the University College Basra Hospital.

Haidar Taher: PhD and professor at the College of Medicine, Basra University.

Hussein Yasin: PhD in physics, lecturer in sciences at Basra University Killed 18 February 2004 at his home and in front of his family.

Khaled Shrieda: PhD in engineering, dean of the School of Engineering, Basra University.

Khamhour Al-Zargani: PhD in history, head of the Department of History at the College of Education, Basra University Killed 19 August 2005.

Kadim Mashut Awad: visiting professor at the Department of Soils, College of Agriculture, Basra University. Killed December 2005 (exact date unknown.]

Karem Hassani: PhD and lecturer at the College of Medicine, Basra University.

Kefaia Husein Saleh: PhD in English philology, lecturer in the College of Education Sciences, Basra University.

Mohammed Al-Hakim: PhD in pharmacy, professor and dean of Basra University’s College of Pharmacy.

Mohammed Yassem Badr: PhD, professor and chairman of Basra University.

Omar Fakhri: PhD and lecturer in biology at the College of Sciences, Basra University.

Saad Alrubaiee: PhD and lecturer in biology at the College of Sciences, Basra University.

Yaddab Al-Hajjam: PhD in education sciences and lecturer at the College of Education Sciences, Basra University.

Zanubia Abdel Husein: PhD in veterinary medicine, lecturer at the College of Veterinary Medicine, Basra University.

Jalil Ibrahim Almachari: Lecturer at Basra University. Department and college unknown. Killed 20 March 2006 after criticizing in a public lecture the situation in Iraq. (Arabic Source: Al-Kader.]

Abdullah Hamed Al-Fadel: PhD in medicine, lecturer in surgery and deputy dean of the College of Medicine at Basra University. Killed in January 2006 (exact date unknown). [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources.]

Fuad Al-Dajan: PhD in medicine, lecturer in gynecology at the College of Medicine, Basra University. Killed at the beginning of March 2006 (exact date unknown). [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources.]

Saad Al-Shahin: PhD in medicine, lecturer in internal medicine at Basra University’s College of Medicine. Killed at the beginning of March 2006 (exact date unknow). [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources.]

Jamhoor Karem Khammas: Lecturer at the College of Arts, Basra University. [Source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers report, March 2006.

Karem Mohsen: PhD and lecturer at Department of Agriculture, College of Agronomy, Basra University. Killed 10 April 2006. He worked in the field of honeybee production. Lecturers and students called for a demonstration to protest for his assassination. [Source: Al-Basrah, 11 April 2006.]

Waled Kamel: Lecturer at the College of Arts at Basra University. Killed 8 May 2006. Other two lecturers were injured during the attack, one of them seriously. [Source: Al-Quds Al-Arabi, 9 May 2006.]

Ahmad Abdul Kader Abdullah: Lecturer in the College of Sciences, Basra University. His body was found 9 June 2006. [Source: CEOSI university Iraqi sources, 10 June 2006

Kasem Yusuf Yakub: Head of Department of Mechanical Engineering, Basra University. Killed 13 June 2006 at the university gate. [Sources: CEOSI university Iraqi sources, 14 June 2006 and Al-Quds Al-Arabi, 16 June 2006.]

Ahmad Abdul Wadir Abdullah: Professor of the College of Chemistry, Basra University. Killed 10 June 2006. [Source: UNAMI report, 1 May-30 June 2006.]

Kathum Mashhout: Lecturer in edaphology at the College of Agriculture, Basra University. Killed in Basra in December 2006 (exact date unknown). [Source: CEOSI Iraqi university sources, 12 December 2006.]

Mohammed Aziz Alwan: Lecturer in artistic design at the College of Fine Arts, Basra University. Killed by armed men 26 May 2007 while walking in the city. [Source: CEOSI university Iraqi sources, 1 June 2007.]

Firas Abdul Zahra: Lecturer at the College of Physical Education, Basra University. Killed at home by armed men 18 July 2007. His wife was injured in the attack. [Source: Iraqi university sources to the BRussells Tribunal, 26 August 2007.]

Muayad Ahmad Jalaf: Lecturer at the College of Arts, Basra University. Kidnapped 10 September 2007 by a group of armed men that was driving three cars, one of them with a government license plate. He was found dead in a city suburb the next day. [Source: Iraqi university sources to the BRussells Tribunal, 12 September 2007.]

Khaled Naser Al-Miyahi: PhD in medicine, Professor of neurosurgery at Basra University. He was assassinated in March 2008 (exact date unknown). His body was found after his being kidnapped by a group of armed men in the streets of Basra. There were no ransom demands, according to information provided by Baghdad’s Center for Human Rights. [Source: Al-Basrah, 12 March 2008.]

Technical Institute of Basra

Mohammed Kasem: PhD in engineering, lecturer at the Technical Institute of Basra.

Sabah Hachim Yaber: Lecturer at the Technical Institute of Basra.

Salah Abdelaziz Hashim: PhD and lecturer in fine arts at the Technical Institute of Basra. Kidnapped in 4 April 2006. He was found shot dead the next day. According to other sources, Dr Hashim was machine-gunned from a vehicle, injuring also a number of students. [Sources: CEOSI university Iraqi sources, 6 April 2006, Az-Zaman, 6 April 2006, and Al-Quds Al-Arabi, 7 April 2006.]


TIKRIT - Tikrit University

Basem Al-Mudares: PhD in chemical sciences and lecturer in the College of Sciences, Tikrit University. His body was found mutilated in the city of Samarra 21 July 2004.

Fathal Mosa Hussine: PhD and professor at the College of Physical Education, Tikrit University.
Mahmud Ibrahim Hussein: PhD in biological sciences and lecturer at the College of Education Sciences, Tikrit University.

Madloul Albazi Tikrit University. Department and college unknown. [Source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers report, March 2006.]

Mojbil Achaij Issa Al-Jabouri: Lecturer in international law at the College of Law, Tikrit University. [Source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers report, March 2006.]

Damin Husein Al-Abidi: Lecturer in international law at College of Law, Tikrit University. [Source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers report, March 2006.]

Harit Abdel Yabar As Samrai: PhD student at the College of Engineering, Tikrit University. [Source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers report, March 2006.]

Farhan Mahmud: Lecturer at the College of Theology, Tikrit University. Disappeared after being kidnapped 24 November 2006. [Source: CEOSI university Iraqi sources, 26 November 2006.]

Mustafa Khudhr Qasim: Professor at Tikrit University. Department and college unknown. His body was found beheaded in Al-Mulawatha, eastern Mosul, 21 November 2007[Sources: Al-Mosul, 22 November 2007, and Iraqi university sources to the BRussells Tribunal and CEOSI, 22-25 November 2007.]

Taha AbdulRazak Al-Ani: PhD in Islamic Studies, he was professor at Tikrit University. His body was found shot dead in a car on a highway near Al-Adel, a Baghdad suburb. Also, the body of Sheikh Mahmoud Talb Latif Al-Jumaily, member of the Commision of Muslim Scientists, was found dead in the same car last Thursday afternoon, 15 May 2008. [Source: CEOSI Iraqi sources, 21 May 2008.]

DIYALA - Baquba University

Taleb Ibrahim Al-Daher: PhD in physical sciences, professor and dean at the College of Sciences, Baquba University. Killed 21 December 2004.

Lez Mecchan: Professor at Baquba University. Department and college unknown. Killed 19 April 2006 with his wife and another colleague. [Sources: DPC and EFE, 19 April 2006.]

Mis (surname unknown): Lecturer at Baquba University. Department and college unknown. Wife of Professor Lez Mecchan, also assassinated. Both were killed with another colleague 19 April 2006. [Sources: DPC and EFE, 19 April 2006.]

Salam Ali Husein: Taught at Baquba University. Department and college unknown. Killed 19 April 2006 with two other colleagues. [Sources: DPC and EFE, 19 April 2006.

Meshhin Hardan Madhlom Al-Dulaimi: Professor at Baquba University. Department and college unknown. Killed at the end of April, according to the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education. [Source: CEOSI university Iraqi sources, 10 May 2006.]

Abdul Salam Ali Al-Mehdawi: Professor at Baquba University. Department and college unknown. Killed at the end of April, according to the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education. [Source: CEOSI university Iraqi sources, 10 May 2006.]

Mais Ganem Mahmoud: Lecturer at Baquba University. Department and college unknown. Killed at the end of April, according to the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education. [Source: CEOSI university Iraqi sources, 10 May 2006.]

Satar Jabar Akool: Lecturer at Baquba University. Department and college unknown. Killed at the end of April, according to the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education. [Source: CEOSI university Iraqi sources, 10 May 2006.]

Mohammed Abdual Redah Al-Tamemmi: Lecturer in the Department of Arabic Language and head of the College of Education, Baquba University. Killed 19 August 2006 together with Professor Kreem Slman Al-Hamed Al-Sadey, 70 years old, of the same Department. A third lecturer from the same department escaped the attack carried out by a group of four armed men Students and lecturers demonstrated against his and other lecturers’ deaths. [Source: World Socialist, 12 September 2006, citing the Iraqi newspaper Az-Zaman, CEOSI university Iraqi sources, 25 December 2006.]

Karem Al-Saadi: Lecturer at Baquba University. Department and college unknown. Killed August 2006. Students and lecturers demonstrated against his and other lecturers’ deaths. [Source: World Socialist, 12 September 2006, citing the Iraqi newspaper Az-Zaman.]

Kreem Slman Al-Hamed Al-Sadey: Professor in the Department of Arabic Language at the College of Education, Baquba University. He was 70 years old when killed 19 August 2006. In the attack Mohammed Abdual Redah Al-Tamemmi, head of Education Department was also killed. A third lecturer from the same department escaped the attack of a group of four armed men. [Source: CEOSI university Iraqi sources, 25 December 2006.]

Hasan Ahmad: Lecturer in the College of Education, Baquba University. Killed 8 December 2006. [Source: CEOSI university Iraqi sources, December 2006.]

Ahmed Mehawish Hasan: Lecturer in the Department of Arabic at the College of Education, Baquba University. Killed in December (exact date unknown). [Source: CEOSI university Iraqi sources, 25 December 2006.]

Walhan Hamid Fares Al-Rubai: Dean of the College of Physical Education, Baquba University. Al-Rubai was shot by a group of armed men in his office 1 February 2007. According to some sources his son was also killed. [Source: Reuters and Islamomeno, 1-3 February 2007 respectively, and CEOSI university Iraqi sources, 2 February 2007.]
Abdul Ghabur Al-Qasi: Lecturer in history at Baquba University. His body was found by the police 10 April 2007 in Diyala River, which crosses the city, with 31 other bodies of kidnapped people. [Source: Az-zaman, 11 April 2007.]

Jamal Mustafa: Professor and head of the History Department, College of Education Sciences, Baquba University. Kidnapped at home in the city of Baquba 29 October 2007 by a group of armed men driving in three vehicles. [Source: Iraqi university sources to the BRussells Tribunal, 30 October 2007.]


Al-ANBAR Ramadi University

Abdel Karem Mejlef Saleh: PhD in philology, lecturer at the College of Education Sciences, Al-Anbar University.

Abdel Majed Hamed Al-Karboli: Lecturer at Ramadi University. Killed December 2005 (exact date unknown.]

Ahmad Abdel Hadi Al-Rawi: PhD in biology, professor in the School of Agronomy, Al-Anbar University.

Ahmad Abdul Alrahman Hameid Al-Jhbissy: PhD in Medicine, Professor of College of Medicine, Al-Anbar University.

Ahmed Saadi Zaidan: PhD in education sciences, Ramadi University. Killed February 2005 (exact date unknown.].

Hamed Faisal Antar: Lecturer in the College of Law, Ramadi University. Killed December 2005 (exact date unknown.].

Naser Abdel Karem Mejlef Al-Dulaimi: Department of Physics, College of Education, Ramadi University. Killed December 2005 (exact date unknown.].

Raad Ojssin Al-Binow: PhD in surgery, lecturer at the College of Medicine, Al-Anbar University.

Shakir Mahmmoud Jasim: PhD in agronomy, lecturer in the School of Agronomy, Al-Anbar University.

Nabil Hujazi: Lecturer at the College of Medicine, Ramadi University. Killed in June 2006 (exact date unknown). [Source: CEOSI university Iraqi sources, 20 June 2006, confirmed by Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education.]

Nasar Al-Fahdawi: Lecturer at Ramadi University. Department and college unknown. Killed 16 January 2006. [Source: CEOSI university Iraqi sources, December 2006.]

Khalid Jubair Al-Dulaimi: Lecturer at the College of Engineering, Ramadi University. Killed 27 April 2007. [Source: Iraqi sources to the BRussells Tribunal, 3 May 2007.]

NAJAF Kufa University

Jawla Mohammed Taqi Zwain: PhD in medicine, lecturer at College of Medicine, Kufa University.

Shahlaa Al-Nasrawi: Lecturer in the College of Law, Kufa University. Assassinated 22 August 2007 by members of a sectarian militia. [Source: CEOSI university Iraqi sources, 27 August 2007.]

Adel Abdul Hadi: Professor of philosophy, Kufa University’s College of Arts. Killed by a group of armed men 28 October 2007 when returning home from university. [Source: Iraqi university sources to the BRussells Tribunal, 30 October 2007.]

KARBALA University of Karbala

Kasem Mohammed Ad Dayni: Lecturer in the Department of Psychology, College of Pedagogy, Karbala University. Killed 17 April 2006.

MOSUL - Mosul University

Omar Miran: Baghdad University bachelor of law (1946), PhD in history from Paris University (1952), professor of history at Mosul University, specialist in history of the Middle East. Killed, along with his wife and three of his sons, by armed men in February 2006 (exact date unknown.].

Noel Petros Shammas Matti: Lecturer at the College of Medicine, Mosul University. Married and father of two daughters. He was kidnapped and found dead 4 August 2006.
Muwafek Yahya Hamdun: Deputy dean and professor at the College of Agronomy, Mosul University. [Source: Al-Hayat, 28 February 2006.]

Naif Sultan Saleh: Lecturer at the Technical Institute, Mosul University. [Source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers report, March 2006.]

Natek Sabri Hasan: Lecturer in the Department of Agricultural Mechanization and head of the College of Agronomy, Mosul University. [Source: Iraqi Association of University Lecturers report, March 2006.]

Abdul Kader Ali Abdullah: Lecturer in the Department of Arabic, College of Education Sciences, Mosul University. Found dead 25/26 August 2007 after being kidnapped five days before by a group of armed men. [Source: Iraqi sources to the BRussells Tribunal and CEOSI 26-27 August 2007.]

Unknown: Lecturer at Mosul University, killed in the explosion of two car bombs near campus, 1 October 2007. In this atack six other people were injured, among them four students. [Source: KUNA, 1 October 2007.]

OPEN UNIVERSITY

Kareem Ahmed Al-Timmi: Head of the Department of Arabic Language in the College of Education at the Open University. Killed in Baghdad, 22 February 2007.

COMMISSION OF TECHNICAL EDUCATION [5]

Aamir Ibrahim Hamza: Bachelor in electronic engineering, lecturer at the Technical Institute.

Mohammed Abd Al-Hussein Wahed: PhD in tourism, lecturer at the Institute of Administration.

Mohammed Saleh Mahdi: Bachelor in sciences, lecturer at the Cancer Research Centre. Killed November 2005.

INSTITUTIONAL POSITIONS

Emad Sarsam: PhD in surgery and member of the Arab Council of Medicine.

Faiz Ghani Aziz: PhD in agronomy, director general of the Iraqi Company of Vegetable Oil. Killed September 2003.

Isam Said Abd Al-Halim: Geologic consultant at the Ministry of Construction.

Kamal Al-Jarrah: Degree in English philology, researcher and writer and director general at the Ministry of Education.

Raad Abdul-Latif Al-Saadi: PhD in Arabic language, consultant in higher education and scientific research at the Ministry of Education.

Shakier Al-Jafayi: PhD in administration, head of the Department of Normalization and Quality at the Iraq Council.

Wajeeh Mahjub: PhD in physical education, director general of physical education at the Ministry of Education.

Wissam Al-Hashimi: PhD in petrogeology, president of the Arab Union of Geologists, expert in Iraqi reservoirs, he worked for the Iraqi Ministry of Petroleum.


UNIVERSITY AFFILIATION UNKNOWN

Amir Mizhir Al-Dayni: Professor of telecommunication engineering.

Khaled Ibrahim Said: PhD in physics.

Mohammed Al-Adramli: PhD in chemical sciences.

Mohammed Munim Al-Izmerly: PhD in chemical sciences. He was tortured and killed by US troops. His body was sent to the Baghdad morgue. The cause of death was initially registered as "brainstem compression".

Nafi Aboud: Professor of Arabic literature.

OTHER CASES

Khalel Al-Zahawi: Born in 1946, Al-Zahawi was considered the most important calligraphist in Iraq and among the most important in the Arab-Muslim world. He worked as a lecturer in calligraphy in several Arab countries during the 1990s. He was killed 19 May 2007 in Baghdad by a group of armed men. He was buried in Diyala, where he was born. [Source: BBC News, 22 May 2007. His biography is available on wikipedia.].
 

667

For Your Information / The occupation cannot stay

« on: November 18, 2008, 09:42:33 PM »

The occupation cannot stay
Serene Assir
November 16, 2008

As one of the intellectual foundations of the Iraqi resistance, how did the work of the Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq (AMSI) begin?

The Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq (AMSI) was established after the occupation began, a religious association whose concerns at the beginning had no relation to politics and came to fill the gap left by the Ministry of Awqaf, or religious affairs. We were also responsible for establishing contact with religious, tribal and social figures, to raise awareness on concepts of citizenship, and to repel the appearance of signs of civil war, as through our detailed monitoring we came to know that the occupation had a clear intention to spark civil war. We were successful, through the issuing of religious decrees (fatwas), between us and all the other confessional and sectarian groups, in achieving this goal.

We also had a third responsibility, which was to raise the consciousness and culture of the people against occupation, because at the start there were many people who had the perception that the occupation came to help them, or to promise them a better life. So through our initiatives, either through mosques on Friday gatherings or through our general meetings, we showed the people that occupation does not serve the nation, and that the occupation has its own goals, and that the occupation works for destruction and not construction.

These were our goals to begin with. There was no aim to take part in political work because we depended on existing political forces, Islamic and otherwise also patriotic, to take on this role instead of us. However, after the creation of the Governing Council in July 2003 we were surprised that the occupation contained the majority of the political forces, either the majority that had come with it from abroad, or the minority that operated from within. So we realised that from one day to the next the voice for opposition to occupation disappeared, because the majority became involved in its political project, which the occupation set up and which a civilian leader was sent to establish, and that was Paul Bremer.

Here, AMSI found itself forced to conduct political work to rekindle the concepts of the opposition, and to raise awareness among the people against the occupation. Our first statement related to the Governing Council and it was a sign that AMSI had added to its responsibilities a new responsibility, that of political and media opposition, and consciousness-raising of the people against occupation. We have currently arrived at issuing statement number 580, and all our statements are political statements.

How has the Iraqi resistance developed?

What is known from a reading of history is that resistance undergoes three phases. The first phase is a phase of reaction. This was perhaps the most difficult phase because the occupation tried to cover up the existence of any kind of resistance, to the extent that it would persecute journalists who would indicate the existence of such a resistance. In this phase, we were the main proclaimer of the resistance, who said that there was a resistance, and provided proof of it.

There is a second phase to resistance, and that is the process of different activities becoming clear under titles and slogans, core or otherwise. This is the phase that the resistance is currently living. There are numerous names, including the 1920 Revolution Brigades, Al-Rashidin Army, the Army of Mujahideen, and it is of course a better phase than the previous one -- more advanced. Once these titles emerged the occupation forces went crazy, because it was no longer possible to cover up the resistance from the media, and so it sought refuge in another idea, and that was to say that those groups were not resisting on behalf of the Iraqi people, but rather that they were groups coming in from the outside, described as terrorist.

This gave rise to another difficult responsibility for AMSI, which was to say through the media to the world that no, this was not true, that there is a resistance, considered legitimate by the religions of the book and the agreements of the United Nations, and on the other hand there is terrorism. We reject terrorism that targets civilians, however we are with the resistance, and what our people are doing is resistance, not terrorism.

We also entered into confrontation with the occupation forces because of these ideas, and we were targeted and from AMSI alone approximately 200 martyrs have left us, and we have 180 prisoners in the prisons of the occupation and the government, from our membership base alone. The reason for this is that we gave support to the resistance, and our work derailed attempts to conceal reality. Currently the resistance is in this phase, the second phase. And we are still working within this framework and are signalling its goals, and wherever we go in the Arab world and even Europe our role is to make known that there is a resistance and that it has its noble goals, and that it is not terrorist and that it wants to free the nation, and it wants to build a state in accordance to the criteria followed everywhere in the world -- for there to be an electoral process to elect the authorities, and that is our right.

There is a third phase, in the history of resistance movements, which the Iraqi resistance has not yet reached. We are working in order to raise ourselves to this phase, and it is the phase in which there is the emergence of a unified leadership that gathers together the different strands of the resistance, and which has some territorial control, and that forces the occupying enemy to the negotiating table. Honestly, this phase is very difficult to reach. Normally, in resistance movements in history, what has happened in the second phase is that resistance begins to receive international support. Look, for example, at the Vietnamese resistance, or the Algerian resistance. Once there are titles and names for the resistance movement, different states or peoples begin to sympathise. However, the resistance in our case is different. It does not yet have international support, not even from the region, and the reason is that for the first time in the history of humanity -- and this surprises many -- there is a resistance against a single pole in the world.

Throughout history, all resistance movements that have emerged, whether in our Arab world or in Europe or otherwise, did so in the context of more than one pole of power. So when a resistance movement emerged against a pole, support was forthcoming from other poles. Look, for example, at the Vietnamese resistance. There was Russia, and it was a great power, and there was China, and there were non-aligned states, and there were approximately 47 socialist states, which supported the Vietnamese resistance. The situation of the Iraqi resistance is unique in that it resists in a world for the first time ruled by one pole. And it is unfortunate that the one pole should be this one. This made the resistance suffer a lot. Because this pole dominates international politics, and international organisations and international media, it manages to check any side that is trying to support the resistance, whether economically or morally or in the media or politically.

We were, without exaggerating, the ones who most supported the resistance against the occupier, even though we were by this act exposing our chests to the flames of the occupation.

The resistance is currently in the second phase, and we are struggling and working for the resistance to move to the third phase, in order to force our enemy to negotiations and to withdraw from our land, and for the country to return to its people.

Because of the uniqueness of the Iraqi resistance, which you describe, many feel the resistance is struggling on behalf of us all -- even outside the Arab world. Would you agree?

I assure you, as I always assure the media, that the Iraqi resistance is not only an Iraqi resistance. It resists on behalf of the Arab world, the Islamic world and the humane world. America has brought oppression to everyone. Its reach has extended all over the world, north, south, east and west. This is a reality that everyone knows. The Iraqi resistance takes on the role of defending the rights of everyone.

I remember a story. I have a friend in London who works in translation and he has employees from China. One employee would ask me each morning how many Americans were killed on Iraqi soil and I would reply. Then I could see that as the number of Americans would rise, he would be happy. So I asked him, given his sympathy with the Iraqi people, perhaps he was a Muslim? When I asked him, he said no. So I asked him, why are you happy every time the number of Americans killed rises? He said because you in Iraq are a barricade. If this barricade collapses the hand of the Americans will reach China. It's possible that the Russian man would say the same, or even a European might say this, as the Europeans may well recognise that America has overstepped all boundaries and has stepped over the rights and will of all people.

AMSI issued a fatwa branding as treason the so-called Status of Forces Agreement the US is trying to conclude with its local puppet allies. Aside from being illegal, will this agreement have any effect on the ground?

As can be seen by anyone who follows Iraq's news, the Iraqi people reject the agreement. It was rejected publicly by the Iraqi resistance, and by associations that support the resistance, and by associations that represent important sections of society, and also by the political forces. What is interesting is that even some of the political forces that are inside the American political game have also declared their rejection. Naturally this may be for reasons that may not be patriotic. There are influences by neighbouring states as is known, and there are many forces tied to Iran, and Iran doesn't want this agreement because it considers the American presence in the long run as dangerous to it.

So what happened was a near consensus in rejection of the agreement. However, unfortunately the agreement lost its negotiability, and it is being forced and if it is not signed then the Iraqi people will pay an enormous price. But agreements are built on an exchange of free will, and built on sovereignty. As a result I believe that this agreement has no meaning, even if it is signed. Why? Because if America manages to stay in Iraq it would execute the contents of the agreement without an agreement: it would hold power. And if America leaves, then the first step the incoming patriotic power would do will be to throw this agreement in the rubbish bin. Further, I think the world is following and knows it is a forced agreement without any worth.

The US occupation in Iraq is defeated, unable to achieve its goals. Its local forces -- in particular the puppet regime of Maliki -- have no credibility. Aside from terror and violence, how does it hang on?

I assure you that the US occupation cannot stay. We say often to the media that the occupation will fall soon. Some journalists are surprised, and answer with the question: You speak with full confidence, how do you know that? We say that we have detailed information and know the reality of what the Americans are faced with.

I recall something one of the scholars said in an interview with Al-Jazeera, in which he said America today resembles the Prophet Suleiman, who continued to stand even after he was dead. Then, as the Quran says, an ant came and ate the stick upon which he leant and he fell dead. And if those people who worked under the prophet knew he was long dead, they would not have continued to do so. And the scholar continued to say that America is beginning to die. And yet before the Arabs and others it continues to seem as though it is a strong power, whereas in reality it is not that way. It is starting to eat itself up.

This beautiful and accurate metaphor is representative, in my view, of the situation in Iraq. America is defeated. America has no confidence. It is comparable to a person hanging down from a tall building, who knows what will happen if he lets go of the thin rope that is the only thing keeping him alive. He is forced to hold on. America knows that if the truth is exposed then it will be finished as a great power before the world.

For this reason it bears daily killing, so as to not admit it is defeated. America does not want to repeat the experience of Vietnam. But be sure, that moment is coming. And because of this I believe that the incoming president, whether Republican or Democrat, has no choice but withdrawal, because he will be surprised by the scale of the disaster which he has inherited from President Bush, and by the fact that President Bush was covering up reality.

The US occupation has destroyed Iraq's once advanced heathcare system. Cholera is now at epidemic proportions. Iraq's once advanced education system has also been destroyed, threatening Iraq's future by attacking the capacities of its future generations. Do you think this was all purposeful?

Yes. I gave a statement to Al-Arabiya channel in September 2003. I said then: We used to say that America has come to stay, whereas now we say that America has come to leave but only after it has destroyed everything. We used to be surprised that there is a programmed policy for destruction, and it is not random, nor is it a response to popular reactions or to actions by the resistance. No, they want an excuse to destroy the hospital, they want an excuse to burn the clinic; they want an excuse to burn the fields. Be sure, when the Americans came they came with a mind for destruction, destruction, and more destruction.

The outgoing US administration and Republicans generally argue that success in Iraq is at hand. How can the US project for Iraq be deemed a success when nearly a quarter of the Iraqi population is displaced inside and outside the country and over a million Iraqis have been killed since 2003?

What makes this war stand out is that it has come about from beginning to end built on lies. To begin with, lies were told to say that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that Saddam Hussein had ties to Al-Qaeda, but although these lies have been exposed, the lies continue. At a time when we witness hundreds of deaths and the destruction of hospitals, they are saying they brought freedom. We, the Iraqis, don't know whether to laugh or cry because of all this madness. They always announce that they are victorious.

If you remember two or three years ago President Bush declared victory was near, and just how he thought so I don't know. They think that they have succeeded, or that is the lie that they made up. I think that what they mean by victory is an increase in the destruction of Iraq, and an increase in killing. The language of US victory is the language of the destruction of Iraq and the elimination of its existence.

According to Pentagon statistics, published on an American war veteran website, since 1991 to 2007 approximately, the number of Americans killed in Iraq was near 37,000. Whereas we know that in the Kuwait War very few Americans were killed, and so in order to lighten the shock for the American people the span of the study was made so long. The published figure of injured Americans is higher than 600,000. I guarantee to you that the number in reality is even higher than that. These are the American numbers. The week after this study was published on the war veterans' site, President Bush ordered for it to be removed because it was scandalous to him. So he is covering up American losses and their real scale.

Do you believe Barack Obama when he speaks of withdrawing US forces in 16 months?

I believe the decision of withdrawal that Obama speaks of is an electoral card. And secondly, whether he is telling the truth or not, should he come to power he would be forced to withdraw. This is because he would not permit himself to inherit the mistakes of others and to pay the price for them, especially given that he is a Democrat. I don't think -- if he has any capacity for thought at all -- he would stay in Iraq.

In the media, even independent sources, the number of attacks against US forces, and US casualties, appears significantly lowered from last year's. Is this accurate, and if so why?

This is true. The number of operations by the resistance has decreased to approximately 50 per cent, yes. There are reasons for this and the main cause is the Awakening (Sahwa) projects. The Americans played a game, led by Petraeus, and succeeded in it. We had areas such as Al-Anbar, very hot areas, and approximately 50 per cent of the operations against the occupation used to take place from Al-Anbar province. Here, in Al-Anbar, the Sahwa projects were created. So that 50 per cent disappeared. Al-Sahwa succeeded for a moment, though they are now finished, as I will describe shortly.

They succeeded temporarily because America put pressure on Al-Anbar for one and a half years; there were no markets for the people, no hospitals, curfews, and people were even brought to hunger and slow death. Suddenly, the US made new leaders from people from the city and said they were going to save the city, and they lifted the pressure from the city, so as to create the impression that the pressure was lifted at the hands of those individuals. They were trusted, to begin with. This is the reason for the success of the project.

The second reason for this success was that there were mistakes made by extremist groups in Al-Anbar, including the killing of people. They would kill a man just because he had been seen entering a US military camp. Or they would kill just because a man had shown support for the police -- even if he didn't work for the police as such. Or they would kill men who had worked for the police and resigned and apologised. These were big mistakes. In addition to these mistakes, the Americans, according to our accurate information, had private, secret death squads, making explosions and putting the blame on these organisations, or killing children or poisoning water, and likewise putting the blame on these groups.

So an atmosphere was created whereby people had had enough, and when these so-called sheikhs of Al-Sahwa came about, the US stopped putting such pressure on Al-Anbar and ordered the squads to stop placing explosives. We also have documented evidence of American soldiers themselves laying down explosives and then by fate to return via the same path later and die from explosions caused by the same devices they had laid. Meanwhile, the people began to sympathise with Al-Sahwa and so the resistance lost in that area the environment that embraced it -- and you know that among the most important factors in the success of a resistance movement is the environment in which it exists. So when it lost in that area the environment the number of operations went down.

Now, however, the Sahwa project is finished. The Americans themselves have abandoned it. And, in addition, the men of Al-Sahwa have themselves committed grave errors, to the extent that they have lost the trust of the people. Now, the resistance has started to regain trust. I assure you that within the coming six months, based on our experienced estimates, the rate of resistance operations will return to the level it was at before the Sahwa project.

How will peace be achieved in Iraq?

There will be no peace so long as there is occupation. The occupation does not work with understanding or negotiation. An occupier does not enter friendship, but rather with the bullet and cannon: this is a universal truth. Every time we tried to solve a problem that came about in Iraq because of the occupation, and succeeded in doing so, the occupation would give birth to another problem. We will not get rid of this vicious cycle, because it is not in the occupation's interest to end it. For example, there were attempts to spark a civil war, and we were able, with the help of God, to solve this, and then the occupation brought in the Sahwa project, and so on.

So the first step for peace is for the occupation to leave.

If the occupier leaves, I won't exaggerate and say there will be peace from one day to the next, no. There will still be problems. But we will be able to contain our problems. We, the Iraqis, will be able to work towards solving them one by one, together, without another power creating problems for us.

We as AMSI have proposed our programme from the beginning: there needs to be the exit of the occupation from Iraq with international guarantees; focus must be put on the political process and the constitution must be cancelled; and there must be the restoration of the real Iraqi army. That is the path towards peace. The first step is the exit of the occupier.

This interview was conducted 31 October 2008.
 

668

For Your Information / Pakistan The Next US Target

« on: November 18, 2008, 09:18:32 PM »

Pakistan The Next US Target       
Written by www.daily.pk     
Monday, 17 November 2008 01:51
 
Bill Kristol, a Fox Television commentator and arch American neoconservative revealed recently what many had long suspected was US thinking about the current international situation.

Kristol recounts that in a 90-minute, mostly off-the-record meeting with a small group of journalists in early July, President Bush “conveyed the following impression, that he thought the next president's biggest challenge would not be Iraq, which he thinks he'll leave in pretty good shape, and would not be Afghanistan, which is manageable by itself… It’s Pakistan.” We have “a sort of friendly government that sort of cooperates and sort of doesn’t. It's really a complicated and difficult situation.” Right on cue, presidential candidate Barack Obama took the baton from Bush in his speech on July 15, in which he argued that more focus and resource were required on both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The Kristol revelation on the surface is staggering yet not a surprise to those who have long suspected that the US presence in Afghanistan constitutes a Trojan horse for a more insidious plan the US has for Pakistan. Some may find it surprising that the US now believes Pakistan to be more challenging than Iraq where the US has 150,000 troops, spent almost a trillion dollars and has incurred over 4,000 fatalities. The neocon vision was that the capture of Iraq, a state that lies at the heart of the Middle East, would allow it to control not just the resources of the region but more importantly its geopolitics. Of course, the post invasion challenge was severely underestimated and despite some reduction in violence (albeit from a high benchmark), Iraq remains a quagmire. The US would like Iraq to be ‘stable’ but not too stable, ‘independent’ but not too independent, have an ‘effective’ military but not too effective. John McCain compares the US role in Iraq with that of Korea and Germany and believes the US could be there for a hundred years. To justify a continued presence the US needs to keep Iraq weak and divided. No one can seriously dispute the growth in sectarianism that has been seen since US occupation. With a self governed Kurdish north, a Shia dominated central government and now US support for the Sunni tribes, General Petraeus has presided over a de facto partitioned state.
 
So, with Iraq closer to de facto partition, America can now turn its attention to Pakistan. This change of focus has been sign posted now for at least twelve months. In June 2007 the US published its National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) with some startling new revelations. Despite citing its numerous successes against Al-Qa’idah since September 2001 including these statements in a declassified document titled “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States” dated April 2006 stated the following “United States - led counterterrorism efforts have seriously damaged the leadership of Al-Qa’idah and disrupted its operations… We assess the global jihadist movement is decentralised, lacks a coherent global strategy, and is becoming more diffuse.”

Yet the collective US intelligence community made a volte-face fourteen months later when it said the following: “We assess the group (Al-Qa’idah) has protected or regenerated key elements of its Homeland attack capability, including: a safe haven in the Pakistan Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), operational lieutenants, and its top leadership.”
 
So, in effect what the US intelligence community was saying was that its six year war against Al-Qa’idah had been a failure and that to win the war effectively required action within Pakistan. The pretext for war within Pakistan was therefore created; any attack on any US target from now on that was traced to the FATA would give the US casus belli to undergo a massive retaliatory attack within Pakistan. Indeed Frances Townsend Homeland Security adviser to Bush said shortly after the NIE was published that the United States would be willing to send troops into Pakistan to root out Al-Qa’idah, noting specifically that “no option is off the table if that is what is required”
 
The US has been itching to get into Pakistan for some time.

Firstly, using remote controlled Predator aircraft to attack targets within Pakistan almost on a daily basis.

Secondly, the US has spent $10 billion on Pakistan’s military since 2001 and more specifically in trying to make Pakistan’s Frontier Corps into a fighting unit for the US military. To ensure Washington gets better value for money, Senator Joe Biden, Chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, is seeking to enact legislation in Congress to tie future security aid to performance.

Thirdly, by promoting General Petraeus from heading up the Iraq campaign to become Central Command (CENTCOM’s) new head clearly indicates that Iraq has become subservient to Pakistan in Washington’s thinking.

Fourthly, the continued barrage of criticism within Capitol Hill, by Afghan officials and western think tanks of Pakistan’s failure to stem cross border insurgency prepares the ground for an eventual attack in Pakistan. Indeed eliminating the Pakistan sanctuary bases is one of the RAND Corporation’s key recommendations in a recent report, funded by the IS DOD, entitled “Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan.” The report does not confine criticism to the FATA but states that the insurgency also finds refuge in the North Western Frontier Province (NWFP) as well as the province of Balochistan so extending the area substantially for future retaliation. 

Lastly, according to a New York Times report in June, top Bush administration officials drafted a secret plan in 2007 to make it easier for US Special Operations forces to operate inside Pakistan’s tribal areas but that turf battles and the diversion of resources to Iraq held up the effort. However, now that forces are being reduced in Iraq, it is inevitable that such programs will be stepped up.

So, why is Pakistan so important?

Mitchell Shivers Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence for Asian & Pacific Security Affairs gave the following reasons in his testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on 25 June 2008:

Firstly, Pakistan is the second most populous Muslim state, the sixth most populous country in the world, and is located at the geopolitical crossroads of South and Central Asia.

Second, Pakistan possesses nuclear weapons and has already fought three conventional wars with another nuclear nation next door, India.

Third Pakistan has a large, growing moderate middle class striving for democracy.

Fourth, elements of extremism and terrorism are at work within Pakistan sponsored by the usa and India.

Fifth, the whole-hearted assistance of the Pakistani people and their government will help the United States achieve its national security objectives in Afghanistan.

Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in an article in the Washington Post in March defined US objectives in Pakistan as “control of nuclear weapons, counter-terrorism cooperation and resistance to Islamic radicalism” and believes Pakistan could turn “into the wildcard of international diplomacy.” This was echoed by Turkey’s military chief General Yaşar Büyükanıt who speaking in March at an international conference in Ankara warned that Pakistan’s political troubles could open the way for the Taliban to seize the country and its nuclear weapons.
 
The US fears Pakistan, as it contains the key mix of Islam, nuclear weapons and people who are impatient for change and who do not trust the Americans. Consistent surveys indicates that the US’s approval ratings are less than 20% in Pakistan and that the people of Pakistan desire for Islamic rule does not equate to a desire for violent extremism. The desire for Islamic governance allied with the above ingredients clearly illustrate why Pakistan has risen to the top of Washington’s radar screen and why Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen has now made four visits to Pakistan since February.
 
What about the war in Afghanistan, how does this fit into the plan for Pakistan?

Of course, Afghanistan has some value to the US but the campaign as Kristol admits will be allowed to continue on the back burner. The US objective for Afghanistan was never to defeat the Taliban or to extend its remit over the whole country. Indeed if it was the objective, the US would have sent more troops. The Soviet Union in comparison had 300,000 troops in the 1980’s and while occupying the cities, could never pacify the countryside. The US and NATO presence at about 65,000 is almost laughable when facing a population of 31 million. The US campaign in Afghanistan is more a forward base combining Special Forces and CIA operatives backed up with airpower and a modest number of US ground forces. The mission in 2001 was to coordinate the fight with allies within the Northern Alliance and amongst other minorities and disgruntled anti-Taliban elements. Geo-strategically, Afghanistan has limited value for the US, other than to ensure no one else should control it. This explains why the priority given to Afghanistan will always be less than Iraq and certainly lower than Pakistan. It also explains why Afghanistan is in the shambles it is.
 
According to the Afghanistan Human Development Report 2007, Afghanistan remains far behind neighbouring countries with a rank of 174 out of 178 on the global HDI (a composite indicator that measures education, longevity, and economic performance). 6.6 million Afghans do not meet their minimum food requirements. 2006 witnessed a significant rise in attacks and a 59% spike in the area under poppy cultivation, making the country a world leader in the production of illegal opium (90% of global production). Low literacy and a lack of access to safe drinking water, food, and sanitation contribute to the still relatively high child mortality rate. With the maternal mortality ratio estimated at 1600 deaths per 100,000 live births, Afghanistan maintains one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world.
 
How should Muslims in the region respond? They need to do at least three things:
 
A. Pakistan should realise what the US is trying to do. It doesn’t require an international relations genius to conclude that the US is seeking to do to Pakistan what it has done to Iraq, namely decimating its military capability and fracturing the country into separate entities. The army who effectively control Pakistan are not stupid; they understand the political dynamic at place. Four Star General Tariq Majeed, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee recently said at an international conference in Singapore that cross-border missile strikes into Pakistan's tribal belt are killing civilians and contributing to the popular perception that U.S. military operations in the region are “anti-Islam.” They understand that when the US talks about reforming the Frontier Corps, this is about ensuring that they fight more effectively for the US, not Pakistan. They also understand that while the US has a tactical relationship with Pakistan, it seeks a strategic relationship with India even to the extent of offering it unprecedented civil nuclear assistance. The $10 billion that the US has given Pakistan since 2001 means nothing, if Pakistan eventually fragments into multiple pieces. With NWFP, Balochistan and Karachi all teetering at the edge, the US has a once in a generation opportunity to turn Pakistan into a balkanised hell hole.

B. The only supply lines into Afghanistan for the US are either through the mountains of Central Asia or through the port of Karachi. Without Pakistan, logistics, the flow of supplies, fuel and other military hardware would soon stop the campaign in Afghanistan. There is no strategic interest for Pakistan to continue to support America’s war in Afghanistan.

Firstly, it allows 65,000 NATO and US troops to permanently occupy a Muslim country creating an anti Pakistani government in Kabul.

Secondly instead of having a secure western border, Pakistan has to have 100,000 troops permanently supporting the US effort thus taking valuable resources from it’s more vulnerable eastern border with India.
Thirdly, Pakistan has to face the blowback, of fighting not just its own citizens in NWFP and FATA, but fellow Muslims across the border.

Lastly, the people of Pakistan and Afghanistan have to realise that neither brutal dictatorship nor secular democracy can succeed in the Muslim world. As has been witnessed since February, Pakistan’s political class have no solutions with respect to high fuel costs, high food prices and the deterioration in the financial environment. The Afghan President has also presided over a country where after nearly 7 years, hunger, corruption, electricity shortages and killing civilians are the watchwords of today’s Afghanistan.

Only the tried and trusted Islamic system of the Khilafah (Caliphate) can succeed in the Muslim world. A coherent effort at re-establishing the Khilafah is now the urgent requirement and is gaining momentum. According to an opinion poll carried out by the University of Maryland, 74% of Pakistanis support the establishment of a unified Khilafah in the Muslim world, the establishment of such an entity is therefore not a question of if, but when.
 
Indeed the major problems in Afghanistan and Pakistan are not one of economic resources but of political will. Afghanistan and Pakistan are not ‘failing states.’  Unfortunately, for the people of Afghanistan they’ve been invaded twice by external powers in the last 25 years and this remains the hub of their problem. For the Pakistani people they have seen over 60 years of political failure with so called “independence” a mere charade.
 
Yet the world is entering a new paradigm in international relations. No longer will the Fed in Washington be calling the shots. No longer will the Dollar reign supreme. No longer is the US military invincible. What started with self evident truths in Philadelphia over two centuries ago has now morphed into implosion on Wall Street and an economic tsunami across the globe.
 
Many cite the Khilafah as a utopian dream, yet those in the know are not so sure. A US government intelligence study by the National Intelligence Council in 2004 called “Mapping the Global Future” presented as one future scenario the rise of a new pan-national Caliphate. Thomas Ricks the Washington Post’s senior Pentagon correspondent in his book “Fiasco” says there is precedent for the emergence of a unifying figure in the Muslim world a modern day Saladin someone who can revive the region through combining popular support with huge oil revenues. A real “nightmare scenario” for the western world as Richard Nixon once described it in his book 1999.
 
So Muslims face a strategic choice either support the US led coalition or politically unify under the banner of Islam. Whereas the former guarantees national oblivion and further balkanisation, the latter should allow the Muslim world to flourish and meet head on the challenges of the 21st century.
 

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General Discussion / The G-20 Economic Summit Won’t Change the "Financial Crime Scene"

« on: November 18, 2008, 12:04:46 AM »

The G-20 Economic Summit Won’t Change the "Financial Crime Scene"

By Richard C. Cook

Global Research, November 16, 2008 Remarks by Richard C. Cook

George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia

November 15, 2008

The G20 is meeting today in Washington , D.C. , to discuss the world financial crisis, its causes, and what can be done about it. But this won’t help the people of the U.S. who have been victimized by their own financial system.

The stated objectives are to find ways to stabilize and reduce speculation in the financial markets and make financial transactions more transparent, more efficient, and more international in scope. But this is also a revolt by the nations of the world against over-reliance on the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency. What we are likely to see over time is a multi-currency regime that includes the Euro and one or more Asian currencies as well.

But the conference will not address the real causes of why the world is heading into a global recession or why the U.S. economy in particular is in such dire straits. Nor will the meeting lresult in redress of the staggering level of bankers’ criminality abetted by the U.S. government in the creation of the financial bubbles whose collapse is underway.

The real problem is that the world is locked into a debt-based financial system run by the world’s banks, where the only way currency can be entered into circulation is through lending. It’s been massive amounts of completely irresponsible lending which have leveraged the bubbles against much smaller amounts of tangible value.

The GDP of the entire world is $55 trillion. This is dwarfed by speculative lending in the derivatives markets of ten times that amount--$525-$550 trillion. No nation has clean hands in this travesty. The governments of the world and the central banks have allowed it to come into being.

Within the U.S. , reliance on money-creation through bank lending has been the problem since the creation of the Federal Reserve System in 1913. At that point the U.S. monetary system was privatized. The case has been the same with all the other nations which have private banking systems that control their central banks. The granddaddy is the Bank of England which dates from 1694.

The creation of the Federal Reserve System marked the start of a century of world war. This is hardly a coincidence. Indeed, the central banking system encourages wars and lives off them, because it is war and the threat of war that is most profitable to a system where the more money governments borrow the more profits the banks make.

All this started with World War I, which was largely financed by the British, French, German, and the U.S. banks. Events have continued in that vein through today, where the nations of the world are armed to the teeth and global finance capitalism tries to increase its control everywhere to the detriment of workers, national economies, and the environment.

To try to fix the crisis through bailing out the system, we are now seeing in the U.S. and Europe levels of government borrowing that have not been experienced since World War II. The purpose is to recapitalize a financial system that has destroyed itself through its own greed and folly. But all this does is defer the bill to future generations who have to pay the enormous compounded interest charges this borrowing entails. Interest on the national debt in the 2009 federal budget is over $500 billion. Every man, woman, and child in the nation is a victim of this crime.

The situation is so bad that many people believe the U.S. may even be in danger of defaulting on its gigantic national debt sometime in 2009.

Meanwhile, the failed financial system is dragging down the world’s producing economy with it, and the bailouts won’t change that situation. Combined with the financial crash has been a collapse in consumer “demand.” In other words, consumers, who are maxed out on their credit, no longer can borrow enough to keep the wheels of the economy turning.

But the reason they must borrow for consumption is that earnings are not sufficient for people to buy what they need to live. This is why in the U.S. there has been an outcry, including with the Obama campaign, for new government job-creation programs. Every day there is another proposal by progressives for new government spending, which, of course, will have to be financed by even more government debt.

So when are we going to learn how to introduce purchasing power without debt? How did we ever come to believe that the only way to create money is through a bank inventing it out of thin air? In the past few weeks we have had a number of Nobel-prize winning economists chip in with their suggestions of what to do, but none have addressed the obvious question of what the alternatives may be to bankers’ debt-based currency.

If we look at history, we see other ways governments have used their powers to create money. Indeed, until the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, the U.S. was a kind of laboratory of alternative methods of money-creation.

If we go back to colonial days, the American colonies used a variety of means to introduce currency into circulation. In Virginia , plantation owners received tobacco certificates when they deposited their product at public warehouses. The certificates then circulated as currency.

In Pennsylvania the government ran a land bank which paid cash to land-owners for liens on property. The interest paid for the costs of government without any taxation of citizens.

In Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere, governments spent paper money directly into circulation. The money received value by then being accepted by those governments, after it circulated within the economy, in payment of taxes.

Other forms of currency were Spanish dollars, Indian wampum, and IOUs. There was also a flourishing barter trade.

The system worked. By 1764, the American colonies formed one of the most prosperous trading regions on the planet. When asked why, Benjamin Franklin said it was because of colonial scrip–i.e., their paper money. When the British Parliament outlawed it through the Currency Act of 1764, an economic depression followed. It was the underlying cause of the Revolutionary War.

During that war, the Continental Congress issued the famous Continental Currency. What likely caused that money to inflate was extensive British counterfeiting, not being used to excess by our national government.

Once the nation became independent, a U.S. mint was founded so individuals could bring in gold or silver and have it stamped into coinage free of charge. New discoveries as with the California and Yukon gold rushes or better methods of extraction from ores resulted in economic booms. From then until coinage lost its value after the Federal Reserve System was established, precious metals were a major part of the U.S. monetary system that included not only coinage but also gold and silver certificates.

In 1791 and again in 1816 Congress passed legislation for the First and Second Banks of the United States . These banks were dupicates of the Bank of England whose purposes were to fasten on the U.S. the same type of debt-based monetary system that was the driving force for the British Empire . Presidents Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Andrew Jackson, and Martin van Buren were among those who saw these banks as a Trojan Horse for financier tyranny. The split between pro- and anti-bank forces was the origin of the two-party system within the United States .

When Jefferson became president in 1800 he refused to borrow from the bank and balanced the federal budget for eight consecutive years by cutting military expenditures. Andrew Jackson took similar action in 1833 when he withdrew federal funds from the bank and paid off the entire national debt. It was recognized back then that fiscal responsibility was an effective means for keeping the government out of the control of the bankers and their political friends.

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, President Abraham Lincoln refused to borrow from the banks. Instead he financed the war through income and excise taxes, sale of war bonds directly to citizens, and issuance of the famous Greenbacks. This came about in 1862 when Congress authorized the government to spend $450 million in paper Greenbacks directly into circulation. Congress also introduced tangible value into the economy by what was then the very wise policy of transferring huge amounts of public land to the railroads and to citizens under the Homestead Act.

During the late 19th century, ordinary citizens were not so stunningly ignorant of the politics of money as they are today. People recognized the Greenbacks for having saved the union. A Greenback Party was formed that elected representatives to Congress and ran candidates for president.

Greenbacks remained in circulation, and as late as 1900 still made up a third of the nation’s monetary supply, along with coinage, gold and silver certificates, and national bank notes. Also, many other business entities, including the “company stores” owned by mining companies, issued their own paper scrip that was part of the circulating currency. For example, in a pamphlet on monetary reform written by American poet Ezra Pound in the 1930s was an illustration of paper money his grandfather issued from his lumberyard in Michigan in the late 1800s backed by board-feet of lumber payable on demand! Of course barter trade continued and still exists today among industrial firms.

But the bankers were on the move. In 1863 and 1864 Congress passed the National Banking Acts which drove the extensive system of state-chartered banks, including some owned by state governments, out of existence. By the early 1900s, the power of the bankers had coalesced under the New York banking trust led by the J.P. Morgan and Rockefeller financial interests.

The bakers struck in 1913 just before the Christmas recess when many Congressmen had already left Washington for the holidays. The Federal Reserve Act had actually been written by bankers from Europe who were allied with the Rothschild interests. Congressman Charles Lindbergh, Sr., father of the aviator, called the Act “the legislative crime of the ages.” Later President Woodrow Wilson, who signed the Act, said he had “unwittingly ruined my nation.”

But the deed was done. The Federal Reserve System created the first major financial bubble through World War I spending, followed by a depression, then created and burst the stock market bubble whose collapse started the Great Depression in 1929. President Franklin D. Roosevelt took over credit creation through low-cost government lending in the 1930s but had to use World War II to achieve full employment because by then the government was totally locked into the Keynesian tax-and-borrow credo of public finance.

The bankers began their comeback in the 1950s and consolidated their power in the 1970s under the heading of “monetarism,” which is the philosophy of trying to control the economy through raising and lowering of interest rates. This travesty–which is really institutionalized usury–is as familiar to us today as the water a fish swims in. We don’t even notice it. Yet it’s this system that has ruined the world. Ever since the 1970s, every period of economic growth in the U.S. has been a bank-created bubble followed by a crash and a recession.

We had the inflation of the 1970s created by the government-induced oil prices shocks, followed by the Paul Volcker crash of 1979-83 when the Federal Reserve raised interest rates above twenty percent and caused the biggest downturn since the Great Depression.

During the later Reagan years we had the merger-acquisition bubble followed by the recession that brought Bill Clinton to office in 1992. Then we had the dot.com bubble of the mid- to late-1990s that ended with the crash of 2000-2001.

Next, instead, of rebuilding an economy that had been devastated by export of our best manufacturing jobs to China and other cheap-labor countries, the Federal Reserve under chairman Alan Greenspan, with assistance from the George W. Bush administration, created the biggest bubble economy in history, with the housing, commercial real estate, equity, hedge fund, derivatives, and commodities bubbles all blowing up at the same time and leaving us with the mess we are in today.

What has happened during the Bush administration has been the greatest crime against the public interest in U.S. history. Its effects are only starting to be evident.

Of course in the face of so many disasters, the credit markets have imploded, and governments don’t know what to do except recapitalize and restructure them but without taking action to address the deep systemic problems with the producing economy. And while the Europeans may have blown the whistle on U.S. excesses through the G20 meeting, this country still faces disaster.

Yes, Wall Street is killing Main Street , and no one has come up with an answer except suggestions for the bailouts and some New Deal-type programs in an environment that is much worse even than in the 1930s. For one thing, most of what we consume today is produced abroad. For another, family farming has been ruined. In a pinch, our nation could no longer even feed itself.

But the amazing thing is how easy it would be to salvage the situation if the government took the simple step of treating credit as what it really is–a public utility like clean air, water, or electricity, not the private property of the banking system. In fact the banking system and the politicians they own have stolen and abused this fundamental piece of the social commons.

Banks have no legal right to work against the public interest. Every single bank that has ever existed has operated under a public charter. The Constitution gives Congress–i.e., the people’s representative government–authority to regulate interstate commerce. It also gives Congress the right and responsibility to control the monetary system.

So why doesn’t Congress do it? Why does Congress sit passively and stare when Federal Reserve chairmen such as Alan Greenspan or Ben Bernanke sit before them and mumble nonsense about markets and interest rates and inflation and the rest of a made-up system whose main result is to funnel the wealth of the economy upwards into the hands of the financial elite?

In my writings I have advocated several measures Congress could take immediately to remedy the catastrophe we are facing:

1. Congress could authorize direct expenditure of government funds for legitimate public expenses, as was done with the Civil War-era Greenbacks. Contrary to bankers’ propaganda, the Greenbacks were not inflationary then and would not be inflationary now, because they would be backed by tangible economic production of goods and services. What has been inflationary has been the debt-based currency which, since it was introduced in 1913, has caused the dollar to lose 95 percent of its value. Greenback-type spending is contained in the proposed American Monetary Act, developed by the American Monetary Institute. 2. Congress could authorize a national infrastructure bank that would be self-capitalized and would lend money into existence to state and local governments at zero percent interest. Legislation for such a bank has been introduced by Congressman Dennis Kucinich. 3. Congress could authorize dividend payments to citizens as advocated by the Social Credit movement founded by Major C.H. Douglas of Great Britain decades ago as a means of monetizing the net appreciation of the producing economy. Dividends exceeding $1,000 a month could be issued from a national dividend account without recourse to taxation or borrowing. Such a concept is related to the Alaska Permanent Fund which paid over $3,200 to each state resident in 2008 and to the concept of a basic income guarantee advocated by proponents of the negative income tax in years past. 4. Congress could utilize dividend payments once they were spent, possibly in the form of vouchers for necessities of life like food and housing, to capitalize a new network of community savings banks that would provide low-cost credit to home purchasers, students, small business people, and local farms.

I worked in the U.S. Treasury Department for 21 years and learned first-hand the history and operations of public finance in the U.S. I have seen the disastrous results of the debt- based financial system and how it has driven our nation, government, and people into bankruptcy. I have also seen how these simple measures of monetary reform would be easy to implement and would begin to turn the situation around within weeks or months.

All it takes is political will and a determination to challenge the death-grip the financial elite has had on our economy for a century.

We can be quite certain that these vital issues will not be addressed by the summit of the G20 meeting in Washington today. If anything, these meetings are likely to render the grip of private finance on the peoples of the world even tighter than before.

But sooner or later change must come. For the immediate future people could fight back by doing everything possible to get out of debt, convert their cash reserves to tangible holdings, and start their own local currency and barter systems. But for real change, a monetary revolution is required.

Richard C. Cook is a former U.S. federal government analyst and an advocate for economic democracy and sustainability. His new book, We Hold These Truths: The Hope of Monetary Reform, can now be ordered for $19.95 from www.tendrilpress.com.

670

For Your Information / Beware The Obama Hype; What "Change" In America Really Means

« on: November 14, 2008, 05:25:45 PM »

Beware The Obama Hype; What "Change" In America Really Means
John Pilger

Nov 12

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21205.htm

November 12, 2008 "Information Clearinghouse" - -My first visit to Texas was in 1968, on the fifth anniversary of the assassination of president John F Kennedy in Dallas. I drove south, following the line of telegraph poles to the small town of Midlothian, where I met Penn Jones Jr, editor of the Midlothian Mirror. Except for his drawl and fine boots, everything about Penn was the antithesis of the Texas stereotype. Having exposed the racists of the John Birch Society, his printing press had been repeatedly firebombed. Week after week, he painstakingly assembled evidence that all but demolished the official version of Kennedy's murder.

This was journalism as it had been before corporate journalism was invented, before the first schools of journalism were set up and a mythology of liberal neutrality was spun around those whose "professionalism" and "objectivity" carried an unspoken obligation to ensure that news and opinion were in tune with an establishment consensus, regardless of the truth. Journalists such as Penn Jones, independent of vested power, indefatigable and principled, often reflect ordinary American attitudes, which have seldom conformed to the stereotypes promoted by the corporate media on both sides of the Atlantic. Read American Dreams: Lost and Found by the masterly Studs Terkel, who died the other day, or scan the surveys that unerringly attribute enlightened views to a majority who believe that "government should care for those who cannot care for themselves" and are prepared to pay higher taxes for universal health care, who support nuclear disarmament and want their troops out of other people's countries.

Returning to Texas, I am struck again by those so unlike the redneck stereotype, in spite of the burden of a form of brainwashing placed on most Americans from a tender age: that theirs is the most superior society in the history of the world, and all means are justified, including the spilling of copious blood, in maintaining that superiority.

That is the subtext of Barack Obama's "oratory". He says he wants to build up US military power; and he threatens to ignite a new war in Pakistan, killing yet more brown-skinned people. That will bring tears, too. Unlike those on election night, these other tears will be unseen in Chicago and London. This is not to doubt the sincerity of much of the response to Obama's election, which happened not because of the unction that has passed for news reporting from America since 4 November (e.g. "liberal Americans smiled and the world smiled with them") but for the same reasons that millions of angry emails were sent to the White House and Congress when the "bailout" of Wall Street was revealed, and because most Americans are fed up with war.

Two years ago, this anti-war vote installed a Democratic majority in Congress, only to watch the Democrats hand over more money to George W Bush to continue his blood fest. For his part, the "anti-war" Obama never said the illegal invasion of Iraq was wrong, merely that it was a "mistake". Thereafter, he voted in to give Bush what he wanted. Yes, Obama's election is historic, a symbol of great change to many. But it is equally true that the American elite has grown adept at using the black middle and management class. The courageous Martin Luther King recognised this when he linked the human rights of black Americans with the human rights of the Vietnamese, then being slaughtered by a liberal Democratic administration. And he was shot. In striking contrast, a young black major serving in Vietnam, Colin Powell, was used to "investigate" and whitewash the infamous My Lai massacre. As Bush's secretary of state, Powell was often described as a "liberal" and was considered ideal to lie to the United Nations about Iraq's non-existent weapons of mass destruction. Condaleezza Rice, lauded as a successful black woman, has worked assiduously to deny the Palestinians justice.

Obama's first two crucial appointments represent a denial of the wishes of his supporters on the principal issues on which they voted. The vice-president-elect, Joe Biden, is a proud warmaker and Zionist. Rahm Emanuel, who is to be the all-important White House chief of staff, is a fervent "neoliberal" devoted to the doctrine that led to the present economic collapse and impoverishment of millions. He is also an "Israel-first" Zionist who served in the Israeli army and opposes meaningful justice for the Palestinians – an injustice that is at the root of Muslim people's loathing of the United States and the spawning of jihadism.

No serious scrutiny of this is permitted within the histrionics of Obamamania, just as no serious scrutiny of the betrayal of the majority of black South Africans was permitted within the "Mandela moment". This is especially marked in Britain, where America's divine right to "lead" is important to elite British interests. The once respected Observer newspaper, which supported Bush's war in Iraq, echoing his fabricated evidence, now announces, without evidence, that "America has restored the world's faith in its ideals". These "ideals", which Obama will swear to uphold, have overseen, since 1945, the destruction of 50 governments, including democracies, and 30 popular liberation movements, causing the deaths of countless men, women and children.

None of this was uttered during the election campaign. Had it been allowed, there might even have been recognition that liberalism as a narrow, supremely arrogant, war-making ideology is destroying liberalism as a reality. Prior to Blair's criminal warmaking, ideology was denied by him and his media mystics. "Blair can be a beacon to the world," declared the Guardian in 1997. "[He is] turning leadership into an art form."

Today, merely insert "Obama". As for historic moments, there is another that has gone unreported but is well under way – liberal democracy's shift towards a corporate dictatorship, managed by people regardless of ethnicity, with the media as its clichéd façade. "True democracy," wrote Penn Jones Jr, the Texas truth-teller, "is constant vigilance: not thinking the way you're meant to think and keeping your eyes wide open at all times."

www.johnpilger.com

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For Your Information / UK helping prepare strategic options in Afghanistan for Obama

« on: November 07, 2008, 07:14:47 PM »

UK helping prepare strategic options in Afghanistan for Obama
"We are already working with General Petraeus, the new commander, and we have seconded individuals to his team to prepare strategic options for the new President," Malloch-Brown said.

"Although we feel the need to prevail militarily in Helmand and Afghanistan, we have always and consistently been clear that a military victory alone will not secure the stable peace that we wish for; it is necessary to have a political track as well," he said.

Speaking during a parliamentary debate on Afghanistan on Wednesday, the minister said that he disagreed that the "dynamic is running against us" following the adoption of asymmetrical warfare by Taliban insurgents.

But he agreed that "an effective, coherent international strategy" was needed, for which Britain and the US were working with allies in the UN. He also endorsed the need for regional partners, which he said "critical for success."

During the debate, former UN High Representative for Bosnia, Lord Ashdown, warned that more troops and more resources would not be sufficient in Afghanistan without the help of neighbouring countries and an international plan with clear priorities.

Former chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Lord Howell suggested that "some co-operation even with Iran, which has the same objectives as we have over a wide area in Afghanistan."

Malloch-Brown said that there had been a lot of speculation about what Obama's strategy would be but cautioned members of the House of Lords that they would have to wait and see as he needed the opportunity to develop his thinking.

"We certainly believe that additional troops can be useful but we have always made it clear that that must be combined with an appropriate political approach. We hope that the American approach will emphasize both things," he said.

The minister said that there was much hope for an opportunity for NATO to re-engage and that "the new president, Mr Obama, will use some of his new-found multilateral authority and friendships to bring a broader NATO commitment back to this operation."

He also called on the government of Afghanistan to "reach out to tribal leaders and other groups who have aligned themselves with the Taliban and bring them back onside." --IRNA
 

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News Items / Airstrike Kills 90 in Afghan Wedding Party

« on: November 06, 2008, 08:55:00 PM »

Airstrike Kills 90 in Afghan Wedding Party

Published on Wednesday, November 5, 2008 by The Toronto Star

by Bill Graveland

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - There are accusations that U.S. airstrikes struck a wedding party in southern Afghanistan Monday - killing scores of women and children and sending the bride and groom to hospital.

[Afghan children receive treatment at a local hospital in Kandahar. The governor of Kandahar province confirmed 90 people had died in the attack with another 30 injured. (AFP/Hamed Zalmy)]Afghan children receive treatment at a local hospital in Kandahar. The governor of Kandahar province confirmed 90 people had died in the attack with another 30 injured. (AFP/Hamed Zalmy) "When the fighting started the jets came and bombed," said Juma Khan, who helped bring his mother and nine other women and children to Kandahar's Mirwais Hospital.

Mohammad Nabi Khan lost two of his sons, ages 4 and 11, and his wife's brother was also listed among the dead.

"There's a lot of casualties," he said. "Most of them were women and children. Many are still buried under the rubble of homes."

"What kind of security are the foreign troops providing in Afghanistan?" he asked.

The governor of Kandahar province confirmed 90 people had died in the attack with another 30 injured.

"It was a mistake - they hit the wedding party and thought it was the Taliban," Gov. Rahmatullah Raufi told a late afternoon news conference.

The alleged airstrikes in the Shah Wali Kot district come only three months after the Afghan government found that a U.S. operation had killed some 90 civilians in western Afghanistan. A U.S. report said 33 civilians died in that attack.

A Taliban spokesman claimed that the airstrike had killed only one of its members and the rest of the victims were local villagers.

Canadian ground troops also operate in the region but a Canadian Forces spokesman could not say if they were involved.

President Hamid Karzai referred to the incident at a news conference held to congratulate Barack Obama on his U.S. presidential election victory.

Karzai said his first demand for the new president was to prevent civilian casualties in operations by foreign forces. He then said airstrikes had caused deaths in the Shah Wali Kot district of Kandahar province.

"As we speak, there are civilian casualties in Afghanistan," Karzai said.

U.S. Forces in Afghanistan and the Afghan Ministry of Interior issued a news release Wednesday to announce an investigation into the incident.

"The coalition and Afghan authorities are investigating reports of non-combatant casualties in the village of Wech Baghtu," said Cmdr. Jeff Bender, Deputy Public Affairs Officer, U.S. Forces Afghanistan. "Though facts are unclear at this point, we take very seriously our responsibility to protect the people of Afghanistan and to avoid circumstances where noncombatant civilians are placed at risk."

"If innocent people were killed in this operation, we apologize and express our condolences to the families and the people of Afghanistan," he said.

Military personnel have been dispatched to the area to begin the investigation. © 2008 The Canadian Press

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News Items / Banking on Bloodshed: UK high street banks’ complicity in the arms trade

« on: November 03, 2008, 07:42:31 PM »

Banking on Bloodshed: UK high street banks’ complicity in the arms trade
War on Want has just released a new report on the financing of uranium weapon and cluster bomb manufacturers by UK banks. It adds to the data released by ICBUW last year that found that RBS and Barclays invested in DU. You can now add HSBC and Lloyds to that list.
31 October 2008 - ICBUW
 The arms trade provides the destructive hardware used in conflicts across the world. It undermines development, contributing to the poverty and suffering of millions. A new report by War on Want, Banking on Bloodshed: UK high street banks’ complicity in the arms trade has exposed, for the first time, the extent to which the five main British high street banks are funding this violent trade.

High street banks are using our money to fund companies that sell arms used against civilians in wars across the world, including the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. They are financing an industry that sells arms to countries committing human rights abuses such as Israel, Colombia and Saudi Arabia. Money from our savings and current accounts is being used to fund companies that produce pernicious weapons like depleted uranium and cluster bombs.

As a result of the financial crisis there are now unprecedented calls for regulation of the banking sector. War on Want is calling on the government to ensure that all banks are made to publish the full details of their loans, holdings and other banking services to the arms trade. The government must also introduce regulation which prevents high street banks from supporting the arms trade.

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For Your Information / European day of action against military infrastructure

« on: November 03, 2008, 07:40:27 PM »

European day of action against military infrastructure
14 Nov 2008 - 15 Nov 2008
War starts from Europe.
14-15 November 2008: European day of action against military infrastructure.
Europe is at war.
The bombs are not falling in Europe. They are falling several thousands of km away in Iraq and Afghanistan. But still war is waged from Europe. Europe serves as a launch pad for military interventions worldwide. The frameworks differ: NATO, EU, US coalition of the willing, UN. The targets also vary: Iraq,Afghanistan, Lebanon, Chad, etc. But the departure points don't:military bases and civilian airports and harbours in Europe.

Europe hosts a large military intervention machinery.

The Iraq war made this very visible. The US and the UK waged war from their European bases. In 2003, there were 54,000 Europe-based US military personnel who were directly involved in the war against Iraq. For example, the US Army was deployed out of Germany and Italy., Bombing flights departed from UK bases and aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean. Marines were inserted into northern Iraq from Crete and Bulgaria. And this is still going on. In 2006 two-thirds of the Europe based US military were deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, preparing to depart or had just returned. Since January2003, over 1 million US troops have passed through Shannon Airport in Ireland en route to Afghanistan and Iraq. Airports across Europe have been used for 'rendition' flights. Without Europe the Iraq war was impossible.

European countries themselves are participating in the ongoing conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. More than 25,000 European soldiers fight under NATO command in Afghanistan. EU forces are intervening in Africa. Both NATO and the EU are developing rapid intervention forces. Several European countries have military bases outside Europe to support their interventions.

We make war under the labels of 'military humanitarian intervention' and 'war against terrorism'. Behind these PR labels, the military intervention machineries protect economic interests and sustain the existing global order.

 

War Starts from Europe. Let's Stop War from Europe.
We call for a European day of nonviolent direct action against war on 14-15 November 2008. This day of action is not being organised by any one organisation ― the idea is that anti-militarists across Europe can adapt the action day to their local context. This call originated in discussions amongst anti-militarist activists from across Europe at the 'NATO: Game Over' action in March 2008.

It is important that we encourage and support each other. It can also be useful when doing media work to be able to say how widespread the day of action is across Europe. Log in to http://europeanpeaceaction.org to be inspired by others ideas and to post your planned action in advance (unless the action is a 'surprise'). After the action day please post reports/pictures/videos.

 

Take action at your local military bases and installations usedfor military interventions! Let's resist military globalisation together!

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News Items / In Biggest Oil Sale Ever, Iraqi Government to Put 40 Billion Barrels of Reserves

« on: November 03, 2008, 07:30:50 PM »

In Biggest Oil Sale Ever, Iraqi Government to Put 40 Billion Barrels of Reserves Up For Grabs

AlterNet

By Terry Macalister and Nicholas Watt, The Guardian Posted on October 13, 2008, Printed on November 1, 2008 http://www.alternet.org/story/102707/

The biggest ever sale of oil assets will take place today, when the Iraqi government puts 40 billion barrels of recoverable reserves up for offer in London.

BP, Shell and ExxonMobil are all expected to attend a meeting at the Park Lane Hotel in Mayfair with the Iraqi oil minister, Hussein al-Shahristani.

Access is being given to eight fields, representing about 40 percent of the Middle Eastern nation's reserves, at a time when the country remains under occupation by U.S. and British forces.

Two smaller agreements have already been signed with Shell and the China National Petroleum Corporation, but today's sale will ignite arguments over whether the overthrow of Saddam Hussein was a "war for oil" that is now to be consummated by western multinationals seizing control of strategic Iraqi reserves.

Al-Shahristani is expected to reveal some kind of "risk service agreements" that could run for up to 20 years, with formal offers to be submitted by next spring and agreements signed in the summer.

Gregg Muttitt, from the UK-based social and ecological justice group Platform, says he is alarmed that the government is pushing ahead with its plans without the support of many in Iraq.

"Most of the terms of what is being offered have not been disclosed. There are security, political and reputational risks here for oil companies but none of them will want to see one of their competitors gain an advantage," he said.

Heinrich Matthee, a senior Middle East analyst at the specialist risk consultant Control Risks Group, also believes there are many pitfalls for those considering whether to make an offer.

"Currently it is unclear which party in Iraq is authorized to award a contract and at the same time to deliver its side of the bargain," he said. "Any contract with an independent oil company will be subjected to opposition and possible revision after pressure by resource nationalists."

Oil companies will find their reputations at risk from the actions of their Iraqi counterparties, such as joint venture partners, suppliers and agents. They will also have to contend with oil smuggling and the possibility that the ruling alliance could collapse, Matthee said.

He said that if the conspiracy theory that western oil companies egged on U.S. and British governments to invade Iraq were true, the plan could backfire on them and benefit rivals in Asia instead. "It is possible the American army has provided the economic stability that will encourage Malaysian, Chinese and other Asian companies to become involved," he said.

There is no precedent for proven oil reserves of this magnitude being offered up for sale, said Muttitt. "The nearest thing would be the post-Soviet sale of the Kashagan field [in the Caspian Sea], which had 7 billion or 8 billion barrels."

China's state-owned oil group, CNPC, has already agreed a $3 billion (£1.78bn) oil services contract with the government of Iraq to pump oil from the Ahdab oil field.

The deal is the first major oil contract with a foreign firm since the U.S.-led war and was followed up by an agreement with Shell, potentially worth $4 billion, to develop a joint venture with the South Gas Company in Basra.

This deal has also triggered controversy. Issam al-Chalabi, Iraq's oil minister between 1987 and 1990, questioned why there had been no competitive tendering for the gas- gathering contract and claimed it had gone to Shell as the spoils of war.

"Why choose Shell when you could have chosen ExxonMobil, Chevron, BG or Gazprom?" he asked. "Shell appears to be paying $4 billion to get hold of assets that in 20 years could be worth $40 billion. Iraq is giving away half its gas wealth and yet this work could have been done by Iraq itself."

The Baghdad government says it aims to increase crude oil production from 2.5 million barrels a day to 4.5 million by 2013, but faces internal opposition from regional governors and political opponents.

The sale today comes as oil prices have plummeted after stockmarket turmoil on Friday. The price of crude fell by more than $4 at one point to $75 a barrel -- the lowest point since September last year and a sharp drop from its peak of $147 in July. Opec, the oil producers' cartel, has called an emergency meeting to agree a cut in output to bolster prices in spite of protestations from politicians including Gordon Brown. Brown said on Friday: "We've had some success in getting the price of oil down: the price this morning is roughly $80, about half what it was a few months ago. I want these price cuts passed on to the consumer as quickly as possible.

"I'm concerned when I hear that the Opec countries are meeting, or are about to meet, to discuss cutting production -- in other words, making the price potentially higher than it should be.

"I'm making it clear to Opec it would be wrong for the world economy and wrong for British people who are paying high petrol prices and high fuel prices to cut production and therefore keep prices high."

A government source said: "The one chink of light has been the fall in the price of oil. The last thing we want is to head into a difficult period with a return to high oil prices. People need to act responsibly."

© 2008 The Guardian All rights reserved. View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/102707/