Iraqi Solidarity News (Al-Thawra)

Spiraling violence and daily bloodshed that began with the early days of the US-led invasion and intensified in recent months have torn the fabric of the Iraqi society, breaking communities and their long-established social networks.

“All the elements of society have been dismantled,” said Fawsia Abdul al-Attiya, a sociologist and a professor at Baghdad University. “You are afraid because you are a woman, a man, a Sunni, a Shia, a Kurd.

“All these things start to change society.”Comparing their life to that under Saddam, Iraqis long for the relative tranquility and safety they enjoyed during the era of their toppled leader Saddam Hussein.

Three years have passed since the U.S. invaders entered the country to “liberate” it, and none of the U.S. “promises” have been fulfilled. All development in the country point to the U.S. failure in Iraq.

Last week, Hans Blix, the former United Nations chief weapons inspector who headed the UN weapons inspection team in the run-up to Iraq war three years ago, described the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq as a "pure failure" that made conditions in the country worse off than under the rule of Saddam Hussein.

Speaking to the Danish newspaper Politiken, Blix attacked the Bush administration saying it ended up in a situation in which neither staying nor leaving Iraq were good options.

"Iraq is a pure failure," The Associated Press quoted Blix as saying. "If the Americans pull out, there is a risk that they will leave a country in civil war. At the same time, it doesn't seem that the United States can help to stabilise the situation by staying there."

According to Blix, the situation would have been better if the U.S. didn’t launch the war in the first place.

"Saddam would still have been sitting in office. Okay, that is negative and it would not have been joyful for the Iraqi people. But what we have gotten is undoubtedly worse," he added.

War-related violence in Iraq is on the rise, claiming scores of innocent lives everyday. Also casualties among the U.S. military personnel are increasing, with at least 95 American soldiers killed in October only.

Before the war broke out, Blix was faced harsh criticism and pressure from the U.S. government after he demanded the American President George W. Bush allow the weapons inspectors and the International Atomic Energy Agency to continue their work as a way to stave off a war.

The U.S. army invaded Iraq but no such weapons were ever found.

Last year, President Bush said he would accept nothing less than “complete victory in Iraq”, but over a year has passed and the situation continues to deteriorate.What we’re witnessing and have been witnessing in Iraq since the war began indicate that victory for the U.S., whatever that might mean, is just an exaggerated dream.

Iraq plans to ask the United Nations Security Council to extend the mandate governing the presence of U.S.-led forces in Iraq for another year, Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said on Monday.

He said a continued foreign troop presence under the mandate, which expires on December 31, remained "indispensable" for Iraq's security despite the government's desire to expedite the training of its own security forces.

In an interview with Reuters, Zebari said there was no rift with the United States over the ultimate goals in Iraq despite the past week's tensions over how much control the Iraqi government has over its forces.

He also announced that Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al- Moualem had agreed to visit Baghdad, possibly in November. Iraq and the United States accuse Syria and Iran of supporting the insurgency and Zebari said the visit would be an "acid test" of Syria's attitude.

By this time you all know the story of the missing Iraqi-American soldier, that he is missing in Sadr-city and he was married.

The missing link in the story is this: He is a family (Cousin) of "Intifadh Kanbar" Spokesman for the Iraqi National Congress (INC) and Chalabi’s right-hand, the next twist in the story US forces blocked Sadr-City although the kidnappining happened in Al-Karada district which is very far from Sadr-City.

Since we are talking about Sadr-City siege so let’s stay there:

Iraqi radio saying:

Is this siege the US imposing on Sadr-City is the outcome of the US negotiations with the so-called armed groups?, is the US openly throwing the glove on the ground? [Challenge].

All these developments does not mean for Iraqis only one thing, the talks between the Americans and the Ba’athists are reaching the point of cooperation to limit the demographic influence of the Shiite presence in Iraq.

[Who remember?, a year ago I said the next battle will be between the US and the Shiite terrorists organizations..like Badr…etc]

The article above continuously playing this tune that there is a conspiracy between the Ba’ath and the US against the Shiite, though, Salah Al-Mukhtar a pro-Ba’ath intellectual said today in his interview on "Hiwar" satellite channel:

The people who are call themselves "Iraqi resistance" and begging on the doors of the American embassy asking for negotiations are traitors, the true resistance don’t ask for negotiations, the Americans will be forced to negotiate.

which way to Tehran?

The signs of the militias are everywhere at the Sholeh police station.

Posters celebrating Moqtada al-Sadr, head of the Mahdi Army militia, dot the building's walls. The police chief sometimes remarks that Shiite militias should wipe out all Sunnis. Visitors to this violent neighborhood in the Iraqi capital whisper that nearly all the police officers have split loyalties.

And then one rainy night this month, the Sholeh police set up an ambush and killed Army Cpl. Kenny F. Stanton Jr., a 20-year-old budding journalist, his unit said. At the time, Stanton and other members of the unit had been trailing a group of Sholeh police escorting known Mahdi Army members.

"How can we expect ordinary Iraqis to trust the police when we don't even trust them not to kill our own men?" asked Capt. Alexander Shaw, head of the police transition team of the 372nd Military Police Battalion, a Washington-based unit charged with overseeing training of all Iraqi police in western Baghdad. "To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure we're ever going to have police here that are free of the militia influence."

The top U.S. military commander in Iraq, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., predicted last week that Iraqi security forces would be able to take control of the country in 12 to 18 months. But several days spent with American units training the Iraqi police illustrated why those soldiers on the ground believe it may take decades longer than Casey's assessment.

Seventy percent of the Iraqi police force has been infiltrated by militias, primarily the Mahdi Army, according to Shaw and other military police trainers. Police officers are too terrified to patrol enormous swaths of the capital. And while there are some good cops, many have been assassinated or are considering quitting the force.

"None of the Iraqi police are working to make their country better," said Brig. Gen. Salah al-Ani, chief of police for the western half of Baghdad. "They're working for the militias or to put money in their pocket."

U.S. military reports on the Iraqi police often read like a who's who of the two main militias in Iraq: the Mahdi Army, also known as Jaish al-Mahdi or JAM, and the Badr Organization, also known as the Badr Brigade or Badr Corps.

One document on the Karrada district police chief says: "I strongly believe that he is a member of Badr Corps and tends to turn a blind eye to JAM activity." Another explains that the station commander in the al-Amil neighborhood "is afraid to report suspected militia members in his organization due to fear of reprisals."

American soldiers said that although they gather evidence of police ties to the militias and present it to Iraqi officials, no one has ever been criminally charged or even lost their jobs.

Among the worst of the suspected Mahdi Army members is Lt. Col Musa Khadim Lazim Asadi, station commander of the Ghazaliyah patrol police. "He has stated to us that he does not believe the Mahdi Militia is a bad organization," a military report said. "He had a picture of Sadr in his vehicle until we said something about it."

"He is a cancer to the station and the people of Ghazaliyah," the report concluded.

On a recent visit to the blue-and-white facility, located in one of the most violent parts of the city, even other police officers in the building complained that Musa and his subordinates are corrupt and tied to the militias. "They steal vehicles and kill people," said 1st Lt. Sarmad Sabar Dawood, assistant commander for the local police, which is independent of the patrol police. "In fact, we are investigating Colonel Musa and the patrol police for criminal behavior."

But when U.S. military officials visited Musa on a recent afternoon, he not only denied that his men were involved in the militias or crime but refused to acknowledge that there had been any killings in the area at all. Although scores of tortured bodies are often found in the neighborhood, Musa said the murders all took place somewhere else.

At his response, 1st Lt. Cadetta Bridges shook her head in disbelief. "This guy is a crook and a liar," said Bridges, 31, of Upper Marlboro. "They're all crooks and liars."

Shaw, 32, of Alexandria, turned the conversation to the confusing division of Iraqi police forces into three autonomous parts: patrol police, regular police who investigate cases, and traffic police. The U.S. military has proposed reorganizing the force so that there is one commander in each neighborhood responsible for all the police. So far, Shaw said, Iraqi officials have not been receptive.

The problems with the tripartite division were evident in Sholeh. Sitting in Musa's second-floor office, Shaw asked him if he worked with the regular police on the ground floor.

"Of course not," Musa replied brusquely. "Why do we need to coordinate with them?"

Visibly exasperated, Shaw and Bridges quickly left and headed for a police station in Mansour, a relatively safe neighborhood in central Baghdad, to meet with a police major they described as one of the better cops they'd encountered.

When Shaw asked what the police in Mansour were doing to reduce the violence, the major said: "There is nothing the police can do. The only solution is to create a government that will take away the militias. Then everything will be fine."

The major, who asked to be identified as Abu Ahmed because he feared for his safety if his full name was published, sat in a closet-size room that he hardly ever leaves. Orange-and-brown sheets covered a tiny bed next to his desk.

"I can't go home or I'll be killed," said Abu Ahmed, who sees his children only when police officers can bring them to the station. He sighed as he looked at photographs of two recently assassinated officers. "And it's getting worse. So much worse."

"I think I must quit soon," he said quietly.

Arabi Araf Ali, a police officer in the southern neighborhood of Dora, said police do little more than pick dead bodies up off the street. In the station's parking lot nearby, a colleague washed off a police truck that had just been used to retrieve the corpses of five Shiite men slaughtered that morning. Brain matter littered the ground.

"Some parts of Dora are so dangerous," Ali added, "that we cannot even pick up the bodies there without Americans. We are just too afraid."

The Iraqi police are not the only ones who feel unsafe. The American soldiers and civilians who train them are constantly on guard against the possibility that the police might turn against them. Even in the police headquarters for all of western Baghdad, one of the safest police buildings in the capital, the training team will not remove their body armor or helmets. An armed soldier is assigned to protect each trainer.

"I wouldn't let half of them feed my dog," 1st Lt. Floyd D. Estes Jr., a former head of the police transition team, said of the Iraqi police. "I just don't trust them."Jon Moore, the deputy team chief, said: "We don't know who the hell we're teaching: Are they police or are they militia?"

The trainers agree that Ani, the new police chief for western Baghdad, is an honest cop who is trying to get the police force in order. But Ani acknowledged in a meeting with U.S. officials that he does not plan to root out and fire militia members.

"I don't have that power," he said. "There are people higher than me that control that."

Among Ani's bosses are the police chief for all of Baghdad, who has been linked to the Mahdi Army, and the minister of the interior, who is a member of Sadr's political bloc.

"I think he's trying to do the right thing," said Lt. Col Aaron Dean, the battalion commander, as he walked to his Humvee after the meeting with Ani. "But I know they're all under certain influences. If you take a big stand against the militias, they're going to come after you."

The difficulty of eliminating corruption and militias from the Iraqi police forces can be exasperating for the American soldiers who risk their lives day after day to train them. "We can keep getting in our Humvees every day, but nothing is going to work unless the politicians do their job and move against the militias," Moore said.

Sitting in the battalion's war room with four other members of his team, Moore estimated it would take 30 to 40 years before the Iraqi police could function properly, perhaps longer if the militia infiltration and corruption continue to increase. His colleagues nodded.

"It's very, very slow-moving," Estes said."No," said Sgt. 1st Class William T. King Jr., another member of the team. "It's moving in reverse."

Happy Halloween

The British consulate in Basra will evacuate its heavily defended building in the next 24 hours over concerns for the safety of its staff.

Despite a large British military presence at the headquarters in Basra Palace, a private security assessment has advised the consul general and her staff to leave the building after experiencing regular mortar attacks in the last two months.

The move will be seen as a huge blow to progress in Iraq and has infuriated senior military commanders. They say it sends a message to the insurgents that they are winning the battle in pushing the British out of the southern Iraqi capital, where several British soldiers have died and dozens have been injured.

The evacuation also comes halfway through Operation Sinbad, which has experienced some success in restoring control in Basra. The operation ends early next year but Basra will need massive investment by the Foreign Office and the Department for International Development to build on its successes.

Without the British officials' presence the stability of the city's fragile economy and political infrastructure could unravel, paving the way for Iranian-influenced militias to take control. There are about 200 staff at the impressive consulate building - formerly one of Saddam's palaces - including a team of bodyguards and ex-Gurkha guards. There were 12 full-time staff, some hand-picked by Tony Blair.

A handful have already left by helicopter and the rest are expected to go this week, some of them to Basra air station eight miles outside the city and the rest back to Britain. A skeleton staff will continue to man the building until it is deemed safe enough for the rest to return. A Foreign Office spokesman insisted last night that its officials were "not bailing out".

"This is a temporary measure as a response to increased mortar attacks," the spokesman said. "Core staff will remain at Basra Palace and the consulate will continue to maintain a full range of activities."

The Foreign Office and Dfid operation in southern Iraq has been criticised for the poor handling of economic and political regeneration in the area.

While £14 million has been spent on refurbishing the consulate, including a new portico, hardened roof defences and swimming pool, it has spent just £12.5 million on reconstruction that included repainting a tower in the city.

The palace, which is surrounded by a 30ft blast wall and graced with manicured lawns, is in the same fortified compound as 800 British infantry.

Major Charlie Burbridge, the British military spokesman in Basra, said: "We believe very strongly that the Foreign Office and other agencies are critical to the long term solution in Iraq. We have worked closely in our shared endeavour and will continue to do so."

The U.S. military death toll in Iraq for October climbed to 100 on Monday, a week before U.S. elections in which President George W. Bush's Republicans could lose control of Congress over his policies in Iraq.

A bomb blast killed 28 people and wounded 60 on Monday in a square in the Shi'ite Muslim Sadr City district in Baghdad where laborers were gathering to wait for job offers, Interior Ministry sources said.

The U.S. military said a Marine was killed in combat in western Anbar province on Sunday, bringing the death toll for the month to 100. October was already the deadliest month since January 2005 when 107 U.S. troops were killed. The highest monthly toll was in November 2004 when 137 deaths were recorded.

Since the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein, a total of 2,813 U.S. troops have been killed.Opinion polls show growing numbers of U.S. voters want to see the 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq starting to come home.

Bush's Republican Party faces possible loss of control of Congress in November 7 elections, with opinion polls showing dismay over his policy on Iraq could be a critical factor in voter intentions.

POOR LABOURERS

Monday's bombing in Baghdad occurred as Shi'ite laborers were lining up for day jobs in a square in Sadr City, a stronghold of radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who heads the powerful Mehdi Army militia.

The blast tore through food stalls and shops. Scattered clothes and twisted metal lay amid debris and pools of blood.

"They were poor laborers bringing a daily living to their family. Let's have Maliki hear that," an angry witness said.There were conflicting reports as to whether the blast was caused by a bomb hidden inside a garbage can or by a mortar.

Sunni Arab insurgents battling U.S. forces and the Shi'ite- led government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki have in the past struck Sadr City with bombs and mortar shells.

Maliki and his U.S. backers have been struggling to bring stability to Iraq more than three years after the U.S.-led invasion. Sectarian violence kills about 100 people a day and political wrangling is hampering reforms.

Maliki and Bush agreed at the weekend to accelerate efforts to build up Iraqi security forces after days of public tension between the two leaders.

Bush, aiming to calm an increasingly impatient America over the war in Iraq, reminded Maliki last week that his patience was "not unlimited" and his support for the prime minister conditional on him making "tough decisions".

Washington is anxious for Maliki, a Shi'ite Islamist, to crack down on Shi'ite militia death squads blamed for much of the killing that is pushing Iraq toward a sectarian civil war.

After days of public wrangling that raised new questions about Iraq policy before next month's U.S. midterm elections, Maliki and the U.S. ambassador declared common goals on Friday and said Baghdad had "timelines" for political developments.

Building effective Iraqi security forces is a key plank in Bush's plans for an eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops.Maliki told Reuters on Thursday he could get violence under control in six months if the U.S. military gave his forces more weapons and responsibility.

A top U.S. general said last week it could take 12 or 18 months for Iraqi forces to be ready to take responsibility for the whole country.

The Iraqi government must move quickly to prosecute all Ministry of Interior personnel responsible for "death squad" killings in Baghdad and elsewhere, the New-York based NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Saturday.

"Evidence suggests that Iraqi security forces are involved in these horrific crimes, and thus far the government has not held them accountable," said Sarah Leah Whitson, director of HRW’s Middle East division. "The Iraqi government must stop giving protection to security forces responsible for abduction, torture and murder."

Sectarian violence between the majority Shi’ite Muslims and Sunni Muslims in Iraq has been steadily escalating since a revered Shi’ite shrine was bombed in the northern city of Samarra in February.

Since then, local and international sources say thousands of ordinary Iraqis have been killed and the UN’s refugee agency (UNHCR) says some 365,000 people have been forced to flee their homes.

Brig. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, the Iraqi interior ministry's spokesman, said that the ministry and the Supreme Judicial Council have begun investigating all officers and employees suspected of collaborating in the ongoing sectarian violence.

"Those who committed crimes will be punished 100 percent and the ministry will not hesitate to punish anyone for any wrongdoing he did," Khalaf told IRIN.

Khalaf said that as part of the interior ministry’s restructuring plan, which started in October, 3,000 policemen were fired on corruption or rights abuses charges. A total of 600 of the 3,000 personnel fired will face prosecution, according to Khalaf.

Khalaf added that the Shi’ite-dominated ministry also sacked two officers in charge of commando units that have been accused by Sunnis of running death squads that kill Sunnis.

On 15 October, Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shi'ite Muslim, pledged in a nationally televised address to crack down on militias. "The state and the militias cannot coexist. Arms can only be in the hands of the government and no one has the right to be above the law," al-Maliki said.

However, analysts say that government rhetoric is not being matched by action. "He [al-Maliki] has issued repeated statements against illegal armed groups, but he is not able to take any concerted action against these militias because of their political weight in his government," said Emad al-Janabi, a Baghdad-based political sciences professor at the University of Mosul.

"This increase in violence has put him at odds with the United States over his seeming unwillingness to crack down against the armed wings of his major political supporters," al-Janabi added.

Shi'ite militias - such as the al-Mahdi army and the Badr Brigade, the two most prominent - have links with religious members of the government, analysts say. As such, these militias are thought to have infiltrated the country's police force and are running death squads which roam Baghdad and nearby cities and towns snatching, torturing and killing Sunnis by the thousands.

In return, Sunni insurgent fighters have fought back viciously, as violence in the centre of Iraq has begun to resemble civil war.

A court trying Saddam Hussein for the killing of Shi'ites in the 1980s could delay delivering a verdict, due next Sunday, for a few days to give judges more time to review testimonies, the chief prosecutor said on Sunday.

Jaafar al-Moussawi said the U.S.-backed Iraqi High Tribunal was still working on the judgement, which could send the ousted leader to the gallows if he is found guilty of crimes against humanity over his role in the killing of 148 villagers.

"We will know a day or two before the trial if they are ready to announce the verdict," he told Reuters.Delaying the sentence, which was originally due for Nov. 5, could be a disappointment for U.S. President George W. Bush and his Republican Party.

Polls suggest Republicans could lose control of Congress in elections on Nov. 7 and a guilty verdict against Saddam could be used by Bush and his allies as a vindication of their policy to overthrow him.

Moussawi expected the verdict -- the first ruling against Saddam by the court -- to include detailed legal reasoning to support the judges' conclusions.Prosecutors have asked for the death penalty if Saddam is found guilty over his role in the killings which occurred after an attempt on his life in the village of Dujail in 1982.

Iraqi law states an execution must be by hanging. Saddam, 69, has said he deserves to meet this fate by firing squad because he is a military officer.Any execution could be delayed by appeals and by the up to a dozen other cases the toppled leader could face.

Saddam is also on trial separately on charges of genocide for the "Anfal" (Spoils of War) military operation against the country's ethnic Kurds in the late 1980s that killed tens of thousands. Hearings for Anfal are due to resume on Monday.

Letter to Bush
Mr. George W. Bush
President of the United States of America esteemed

After the greetings….

In these dangerous moments in the history of our country Iraq, which has been invaded, occupied and destroyed with no legal international legitimacy, and even infringed upon, After your intelligence admitted the unauthenticated information on which this aggression was carried out.

The references made by the Secretary-General of the United Nations, lawmen and politicians in the world on the legitimacy and legality of this war and its consequences, that this war is completely and utterly false, and from the consequences of the so-called court, the illegal trial which did not represent the will of the Iraqi people, and represent another page of aggression and occupation. Especially that "international laws" do not allow the occupation forces to change the judicial and constitutional order in the occupied State.

The implications of mass destruction and sectarian strife and civil infighting in Iraq divided the people of the one nation, assume your responsibility, legally and morally, is a strategic blunder acknowledged by many of your politicians and military generals.

Therefore, committing another mistake is not less serious and dangerous as it goes on behind the scenes that a ready unfair decision been prepared beforehand, prior to the occupation might emerge from this Court to liquidate President Saddam Hussein, and coincided with Congress elections of the American administration, which is trying to save its position through this decision.

That such a decision would be the spark that ignite the country and plunge the whole region into an unknown inferno, especially after the occupation of Iraq costing the region its strategic balance and released Iran’s grip which is considered the enemy number one of Arabs, Muslims, and America and you gave Iraq to Iran on a golden plate.

Mr. President, Iraq is a country that adores its legitimate national leadership, headed by President Saddam Hussein, working for the return of the leadership and the reconstruction and security, and the best proof was issued by the more than 600 heads of the major clans in Iraq In this direction.

You are risking the lives of your troops who lost control in Iraq, your national interests and security in the region for generations to come, the American and Iraqi peoples and the peoples of the region will pay a heavy price for such a decision if you are determined to impose.

Especially this is a political trial and has nothing to do with the law, Consequently, we see the need to stop this farcical trial and the release of Mr. President Saddam Hussein and all the detainees, because this is the only way out for your forces and your embarrassment in Iraq. It is also the ideal solution for the future of Iraq, the region and the world.

The Defense Team of President Saddam Hussein and his comrades detainees has done everything in its power to uncover the truth, which is now clear to all.

God be our witness,

Attorney

Khalil Dulaimi

Head of the Defense Team of President Saddam Hussein and all the detainees in Iraq

October 28 2006

The message to the Baghdad morgue was simple - they could do what they liked with the plastic handcuffs, but the metal ones were expensive and needed to be returned. Such is the murderous state of affairs in Iraq at the moment that the demand, made by a militia gunman who is also believed to be a member of the Special Police Commandos, hardly caused a stir.

There was a similar lack of shock when a dozen bodies were brought in with identification cards showing that each had the name Omar. The catch here was that Omar is a Sunni name, and this fact was enough to seal their fate at Shia checkpoints.

Baghdad is full of checkpoints. Leaving the Hamra Hotel, where the dwindling band of British journalists outside the Green Zone stay, means negotiating the Badr Brigade, their Shia competitors the Mehdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr, and the Kurdish peshmerga. The Iraqi police and the government paramilitaries, in the meantime, have their own barriers. And there are others: the Shia Defenders of Khadamiya, set up by Moqtada's cousin Hussein al-Sadr, and the government-backed Tiger and Scorpion brigades.

They all have similar looks: balaclavas or wrap-around sunglasses and headbands, black leather gloves with fingers cut off, and a very lethal arsenal of weapons. When not manning checkpoints, they hurtle through the streets in 4x4s, scattering the traffic by firing in the air. Out of sight, they stand accused of arbitrary arrests and extrajudicial killings.

This is a shadowy struggle, which involves tortured prisoners huddled in dungeons, murder victims mutilated with knives and electric drills, and distraught families searching for relations who have been "disappeared".

Iraq's savage sectarian war is now regarded as a greater obstacle to any semblance of peace returning than the insurgency, and was the main reason for the Americans recently pouring 12,000 troops into the capital - an operation that, they now acknowledge, has failed.

Yet, ironically, the death squads are the result of US policy. At the beginning of last year, with no end to the Sunni insurgency in sight, the Pentagon was reported to have decided to train Shia and Kurdish fighters to carry out "irregular missions". The policy, exposed in the US media, was called the "Salvador Option" after the American-backed counter-insurgency in Latin America more than 20 years ago, which led to 70,000 deaths and countless instances of human rights abuse.

Some of the most persistent allegations of abuse have been made against the Wolf Brigade, many of whom were formerly in Saddam's Baathist forces. Their main US adviser until April last year was James Steele, who, in his own biography, states that he commanded the US military group in El Salvador during the height of the guerrilla war and was involved in counter-insurgency training. The complaints against Iraqi special forces continue. At the end of last year, while in Iraq, I interviewed Ahmed Sadoun who was arrested in Mosul and held for seven months before being released without charge.

During that time, he said, he was tortured. He showed marks on his body, which were the results of the beatings and burnings. Mr Sadoun, 38, did not know which paramilitary group, accompanied by American soldiers, had seized him, but the Wolf Brigade was widely involved in suppressing disturbances in Mosul at the time.

Mr Sadoun fled to Amman to escape further official attention. His family, however, had stayed behind in Mosul, and last month his 27-year-old brother, Rashid, was arrested by paramilitaries. His body, shot in the head, was dumped on a stretch of waste ground five days later.

As the US and British policies in Iraq reach the last stages of unravelling, there are increasingly frantic calls to the Prime Minister, Nour al-Maliki, from Washington and London to rein in the government-sponsored death squads. The problem is that the militias, well armed and entrenched, are connected to political parties who know that Mr al-Maliki is dependant on their support. Two violent incidents last week illustrated the extent of the grip the gunmen now have on Iraqi society.

US and Iraqi forces went into Sadr City, the vast Shia slum on the outskirts of Baghdad, to capture, according to the military, "a top, illegal armed group commander directing widespread death-squad activity".

Instead of congratulating the troops, Mr al-Maliki, purportedly the commander-in-chief of Iraq's military, angrily complained he was not told about the operation, adding: "We will ask for clarification of what happened in Sadr City, we will review the issue with the multinational forces so that it will not be repeated."

Mr al-Maliki, needless to say, needs the backing of Moqtada al-Sadr, who controls Sadr City. Falan Hassan Shansai, the leader of the Sadr bloc, which has 30 out of the 275 seats in the parliament, publicly warned of the consequences if such action was, indeed, repeated.

In the south, 800 members of the Mehdi Army in black uniforms stormed Amarah, the capital of Maysan province, recently vacated by the British, and took over the city. Dozens were killed in the fighting, while around 500 British forces were put on standby in Basra but did not intervene. Moqtada's men left after blowing up three of the main police stations.

The Mehdi Army does not always have to resort to violence to achieve its aim. In districts it controls, such as Hurriyah in north-west Baghdad, owners of businesses and properties are simply told they are being taken over, and large red crosses are painted on the premises as a message that they have a few days to leave.

Sergeant Jeff Nelson, an intelligence analyst with the US army's 1st Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment, in Baghdad, said: "They have infiltrated every branch of public service and every political office they can get their hands on. As soon as the US leaves, they will be able to dominate the area with key citizens, key offices."

Sgt Nelson said his battalion has investigated 40 sectarian killings and collected 57 bodies in one week. None had led to any arrest. He said: "Sometimes we have a feeling of complete hopelessness."

One reason why Mr al-Maliki's government was not told about the Sadr City raid was that this has led in the past to the targets being warned off. Earlier this month, the Americans received intelligence about a Shia militia torture chamber in Baghdad. Captain Kevin Sage, whose unit was due to raid the address, needed approval from the Iraqi authorities. This was delayed for several days, and, when it eventually came through, the two-storey building was found to be abandoned.

Being arrested does not mean that militia members will be kept in custody. Major Hussein al-Qaisi, a battalion commander with the 6th Division of the Iraqi army, said: "Sometimes they will back them up no matter what, and we just have to let them go."

American military police backed by Iraqi troops maintained their cordon of Baghdad's Sadr City on Sunday, manning barricades and checkpoints in and around the Shiite slum in an operation to find a kidnapped U.S. soldier and to capture Iraq's most notorious death squad leader.

The soldier, an Iraqi American translator whose name has not been released, has been missing for six days. He was abducted by armed men while making an unauthorized visit to see relatives in the Karrada neighborhood of central Baghdad last Monday.

U.S. forces have effectively sealed off Sadr City and its 2.5 million residents from the rest of Baghdad, and within Sadr City, they have cordoned off the neighborhood around the home of alleged death squad leader Abu Deraa, according to an Iraqi Interior Ministry official who would not be quoted by name because he was not authorized to release the information. U.S. officials have refused to comment on whether they believe that Deraa is holding the missing soldier, and it was unclear whether the two goals of the U.S. operation -- finding the soldier and capturing Deraa -- are in fact related.

On Sunday, U.S. troops searched every car going in and out of Sadr City. Even donkey carts were searched; an American female MP with her hair in a bun under her helmet patted a donkey as Iraqi troops sorted through the junked engine parts and cardboard piled on his back.

About a mile away, 1,000 men and women massed inside Sadr City to protest the continuing U.S. siege. A woman cloaked in black robes declared over loudspeakers booming across a square that food and medicine were running short because of the near-blockade.

Parliament members and tribal leaders took the podium to demand that the Americans go away. Men in the crowd pumped their fists in defiance, but heeded the appeals to remain calm.

"The Americans are trying to pull the Sadr trend into war with the U.S.," one speaker in brown robes exhorted. "Do not fall for their tricks. Keep calm, keep cool."

The Interior Ministry official and residents of Sadr City said close lieutenants of Deraa's and some of his relatives were killed in U.S. raids near his house on Wednesday and Friday. They claimed said Deraa, who is feared by Sunnis across the capital for allegedly leading a gang that has kidnapped, tortured and killed thousands of Sunnis, appeared at a funeral Friday and vowed revenge against the United States and against anyone in Sadr City who cooperated in the attacks. The Interior Ministry spokesman said that Deraa accused Moqtada al-Sadr -- an anti-U.S. Shiite cleric with many followers in Sadr City who leads the Madhi Army militia -- of being a coward.

The Madhi Army, which runs Sadr City, has been accused of killing thousands of Sunni Arabs. But many security officials believe that Sadr is losing control of extremist members of his militia, and that Deraa may be a rogue element.

Sadr denies knowing anything about the kidnapping of the U.S. soldier, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said last week. The soldier's brother also was abducted, but then he was freed and afterward told police that the kidnappers were from the Madhi Army, Maliki said.

Although the Sadr movement has previously disavowed Abu Deraa, a Sadr spokesman said on Sunday that Deraa was in fact a member of the militia and that he would never speak against the cleric.

"Abu Deraa is merely a slave and a simple person in the Sadr trend, and he could not utter such words, for he is one of the dear fighters of the Madhi Army and the Sadr trend," said Mohammed al-Kaabi, who works in Sadr's office in the city of Najaf.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military said it launched a surprise attack on insurgents who were massing in two places to ambush coalition forces near the city of Balad, 50 miles north of Baghdad, killing about 17 guerrillas. Local officials and residents, who put the number of dead at 11, said the group had gathered to defend the Sunni hamlet of Duluiyah, about four miles across the Tigris River from Balad, fearing that it was going to be attacked.

The two towns were the site of intense Shiite-Sunni strife earlier this month, after Sunni insurgents kidnapped and beheaded 17 Shiite laborers in Duluiyah. Shiite leaders in Balad responded by asking for protection from the Madhi Army, touching off a four-day sectarian rampage that left as many as 100 people dead. Both towns have since been bracing for revenge attacks. Duluiyah police Maj. Ahmed Aziz said a group of armed men had gathered late Saturday to defend the town after receiving news that commandos from the Interior Ministry -- which has been accused of harboring Shiite death squads -- were preparing an assault. He said the group was "planning to ambush the commandos if they launched such an attack," but instead was struck by three missiles fired by U.S. jets.

Ali Kareem, a 35-year-old farmer whose brother was killed in the strike, said groups were positioned around the town to repel an expected offensive by U.S. forces and Interior Ministry commandos. He said their operations were coordinated with the local police.

"We told the police that we do not need you with us in this operation, and we asked them to remain at their police station to defend the city in case the Interior commandos came and wanted to take over the city," Kareem said. "So we would be the first line of defense, and the police would be the second line of defense inside the city. We would not let them take us as prisoners. Either they kill us or we kill them."

The U.S. military statement said coalition forces were moving "toward their objective" early Sunday when they "encountered terrorist activity on two separate occasions along their route." The statement, which did not specify what the purpose of the operation was, said that aircraft "engaged the targets with precision fire," killing four terrorists in the first strike and about 13 more in subsequent attacks.

Elsewhere, 17 police trainees and translators reportedly were killed when gunmen ambushed their bus near the southern city of Basra, local authorities said. Baghdad police said 25 bodies, many of which had been tortured, were found in areas across the capital Sunday morning. And at least 25 other people were killed in shootings, bombings and other violence in Iraq on Sunday, police, security officials and wire services reported.

Officials at state television station Iraqiya said that one of their sports broadcasters, Naqsheen Hamma Rasheed, was killed along with her driver Sunday morning while headed to work in Baghdad. She was the second sportscaster from the station to be murdered in the last five months.

Falah al-Fadhly, the station's managing editor for news, said that Rasheed, a Kurd, was shot at about 9:30 a.m. as she was getting out of the car to go into the station, which is located across the street from Iraq's Justice Ministry. The gunmen fled, he said.

Including Sunday's killings, 86 reporters have been killed in Iraq since the war began in March 2003, including 25 so far this year, and 36 media assistants have been killed, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists in New York.

Special correspondents Saad Sarhan in Najaf, Muhanned Saif Aldin in Tikrit and Naseer Nouri in Baghdad contributed to this report.

At the last day of Ramadan, Sa’ad and other three young colleagues who work for Sader office loaded a car with kids dresses and went to Fadhil neighborhood in Baghdad to distribute them there among kids for Eid celebration.

Sa’ad like most of the Baghdadies knew about the ongoing fight between Mahdi army which is loyal to Sayed Muqtada Al-Sader and fadhil neighbourhood, one of the oldest neighbourhood in Baghdad, the majority there is Sunni.

The fight which began few months ago left a lot of causalities from both sides, Sunni who live in Sheikh Omer fled the place because of Mahdi army threats and because they could not continue their works there any more and Shiite who live in Fadhil went to Sader city for the same reason.

But Sa’ad insisted to take a car belongs to Sader office and go there to distribute dresses among kids there for Eid holiday.

Sa’ad family, particularly his mother who has only him and his wife with his five kids asked him not to go because the situation is very risky and no one will believe that he comes for the sake of the kids, but he believed that he was doing something good and he will survive.

On Monday Sa’ad went with his three colleagues to Fadhil neighbourhood and began to tour the place and grant kids with gifts from Sader, but they were stopped by an armed man who asked them what they were doing there?

They told him that they came to give these presents to the kids from Sader office but before sa’ad complete his sentence eight bullets went in his leg and a another in his heart.

His friend who was trying to help him were shot in the head too and so as the other two, within few minutes all of them were dead.

The armed men came to put them all in the car and put fire in their bodies but the people in the neighbourhood protested and condemned his act so he began to shoot in the air and ranaway.

At the first day of the Eid, Sa’ad funeral was set up in Sader city as well as for his other three colleagues.

His uncle told me," I do not know what happened to us we Iraqis, I swear Sa’ad intention was good, he did not mean something bad, but do you know the three Sunni families who still live in our neighbourhood came to Sa’ad funeral to console me and Sa’d mother. They were receiving the mourners."

Azzaman reports this morning from Washington (Saturday October 28) that US officials say the option of an emergency Iraqi "salvation government" is on the table for discussions in the Bush administration, adding the following details.

The anonymous Bush administration sources say Prime Minister Maliki "could" be himself head of the new government, "however" it could be composed of between nine and eleven individuals, who could be Iraqi military people who enjoy the confidence of the people.

And "observers" say the idea of a salvation government is based on the idea of a suspension of Parliament, and a freezing of the constitution, for a period of at least two years, which would be followed by new elections under the supervision of the UN. Purposes of the hypothetical government would naturally include provision of basic services, security, and so on.

The Washington observers added there could be surprises in the Iraqi situation, not least because the US congressional elections are upon us. They said: "Anything could happen that might improve the situation by way of reflecting positively on the US administration of Iraq, which is under heavy criticism from the Democratic Party, which is looking forward to a better position in the coming Congress". And the writer adds that the Democratic criticism is especially strong given the spike in US casualties this month.

Maliki, for his part, dismisses this coup talk as election-time posturing, and says the Iraqi security situation would be much improved if it were not tied to the US-administration's apron strings. The journalist quotes Maliki: "If there is a single party responsible for the shaky security situation, it is the occupation".

The above is the top Azzaman story this morning, spread across the top of the front page.

LATER that day, Maliki phoned Bush just to talk, and they arranged a confidence-building teleconference session, after which press secretary Show said (according to Wapo.com):

Snow said that Bush assured Maliki of continuing U.S. support despite midterm election criticism of the war. "Both leaders understand the political pressures going on. But the president told him: Don't worry about politics in the United States because we are with you, and we are going to be with you," Snow said.

Spot the monkey?

President Bush stepped into an increasingly fractious relationship with the Iraqi government in a videoconference with Baghdad on Saturday after days of angry comments by Iraqi leaders about what they see as American meddling.

The 50-minute conference between Mr. Bush and Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki took place after an acrimonious conversation late Friday between Mr. Maliki and the American ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad. According to an aide to Mr. Maliki, the Iraqi leader said that he was "a friend of the United States, but not America’s man in Iraq."

. . . A Maliki spokesman, Ali Dabbagh, said the prime minister had said the Iraqi government wanted more control over its army, which operates under Americans.

. . . Mr. Maliki leads a government that is a fragile coalition between Sunnis, Kurds and other groups, but with the arguments made in recent days, appears to be placing himself firmly inside the Shiite camp, lending an increasingly sectarian tinge to the Iraqi political landscape.

One major lever the Iraqis have is the United Nations agreement that extends legal authority for foreign troops to be here. Senior officials are trying to amend the agreement, which expires on Dec. 31, in order to give the government more control over parts of the army sooner, a process American officials are watching worriedly.

"I am now prime minister and overall commander of the armed forces, yet I cannot move a single company without coalition approval because of the U.N. mandate," Mr. Maliki told Reuters on Thursday. "If anyone is responsible for the poor security situation in Iraq, it is the coalition."

I'm sure the negotiation process for a new UN mandate would get very exciting if Maliki were to suggest casually that the Iranian government would do a more efficient job of training and equipping the Iraqi army than the Americans have done. I'll have to keep an eye on what develops as December 31st approaches.

Baghdad is rife with the strangest rumours again chiefly as a result of the latest deployment of American troops around major Shi’ite districts in Baghdad, signaling a movement against Shi’ite militias.

The rumours also seem to have penetrated the concrete barriers of the Green Zone where anxious Iraqi governmental officials are whispering about an impending American "coup," and according to some well-connected Iraqis inside the Green Zone, several officials have made travel arrangements.

This followed tensions over the last week between the U.S. and a defiant PM Maliki that were supposedly resolved yesterday with the joint Iraqi-American statement reaffirming U.S. support for the Iraqi government and the commitment of the Iraqi government to a timetable for disbanding militias.

The heavy deployment of American troops along with elite Iraqi security forces that are not part of the Interior or the Defense ministries aggravated these fears.

Mahdi Army groups in Sadr City are accusing SCIRI of setting up the American military operation against them. This could spell further trouble in Shi’ite cities in the south and another confrontation between the Mahdi Army and Iraqi security forces (dominated by SCIRI and Badr).

Sources in Sadr City reported that a son of Abu Dera’ and an aide were killed in the first American raid against the Chuwadir area of Sadr City Wednesday. Abu Dera’ is a feared name in Sadr City and Sunnis accuse him of atrocities against their community in several districts surrounding Sadr City.

It’s hard to get facts about him since he has become a sort of a legend in that area of Baghdad, but people now claim that Sadr personally appointed him the responsibility of cleaning up the ranks of the Mahdi Army in Sadr City and that he has started cracking down on rival gangs and splinter Mahdi Army groups in the area.

Following the American raid, he is reported to have fled behind the Sadda and is now in the Al-Amin district, just southeast of Sadr City. Clashes are still reported from Sadr City and American troops have blocked all main streets leading into the huge slum.

Tensions are still high in Amara, Diwaniya and Samawa. There was a failed assassination attempt against the military intelligence commander (a SCIRI member) in Samawa, and there were clashes between militias and the Iraqi police in Suwayra southeast of Baghdad. All are signs of the increasing distrust between the Sadrist movement and SCIRI, which form the largest blocs inside the UIA.

There was a brief scare at Najaf Thursday when local authorities closed down the shrine for an hour, citing a security threat. The shrine has been opened since but there are speculations on several Iraqi message boards that an incident at the shrine may be created in order to relieve the current tensions between the U.S. and the Shia and in order to speed up the formation of the Shi’ite federal region in the south.

In a related development, Muqtada Al-Sadr issued instructions to his followers yesterday to avoid an open confrontation with American troops and what he described as "their Nawasib followers." Nawasib in Shia literature roughly translates to 'those who have set themselves against the prophet’s household.’

It’s a historical reference to Muslim caliphs and armies who have persecuted the prophet’s grandsons and their followers (the Shia). The term is used today in Iraq among Shi’ite circles as a veiled code for Sunnis, although they deny that and say they only mean terrorists who target the Shia. But many Sunni victims were taunted as Nasibis before their torture or execution by Shi’ite militias.

Another significant point in the communiqué is a sense that the media is unfairly aligned against the Shia, a point which I’ll return to later. But here is the text of the statement (my translation):

1- I strongly reject, or I should say it is forbidden, to participate in any Shia-Shia, Sunni-Shia, or Iraqi strife, for whatever excuse. Preserving our beloved Iraq and driving out the ghost of occupation is our goal. Know that this infighting benefits the menacing trinity in general, and the occupier in particular. Therefore, do not be assisting them.

2- The murder, martyrdom or detention of any one of the believers by the occupation [forces] or any other security force is a glory and an honour for me and all the believers on earth, as long as we are right.

That does not mean armed deployment and irresponsible reactions. Consult with your Hawza in everything. If it says go back, then go back. Just as you obeyed [your Hawza] in your jihad, obey it in your peace. And as my father (hallowed be his secret) said: "As I have told you one day, you should obey the orders of your clerics.

Do not move and do not say a thing before your religious leadership says something. It is unacceptable, my dear. Because then you will only harm yourselves, your religion, your life and your afterlife."

3- The media and military campaign waged by the forces of darkness, represented by the occupiers and the Nawasib, against the followers of the two Sadrs has become clear.

On one hand, they raid the offices of the Martyr (hallowed be his secret) and cultural centres, and on the other they detain and assassinate the personalities of this honourable movement, in addition to the media war by paid channels. After their proclaimed war on terror in Iraq, represented by the Nawasib, they have replaced this with a war against the [Shia] sect, and the sons of the two Sadrs in particular.

Developments in Baghdad and its surroundings have only proved the cooperation of the Nawasib with the occupier, and the cooperation of the media with both. They do not display their explosives and suicide vests, but instead they present it as self-defense against an attack. Shame on them and on their actions.

With great regret, this is all evident to leaders and politicians, but none have whispered a word [against it]. In general, be alert my dear brothers in this army and do not allow them to drag you to what they want.

Instead we want you to preserve yourselves so that the powers and armies of darkness are not allowed to dominate our beloved Iraq. Let everyone know that my sole enemy is the occupier and his Nawasib followers. I will not accept any other party, be it Sunni or Shia, to be my enemy. They are your brothers in life and the afterlife, and an attack on any Iraqi is an attack against you and me. So fear Allah and be mindful.

If I am killed or detained or forced to be away from you, commit to your religion and your sect and preserve your Iraq and your unity and your brotherhood, and do not be scattered, for the blood of our martyrs, the two Sadrs, are a torch that will light your way until Judgement Day. Their movement is never-ending and is here to stay.

[Seal]

Muqtada Al-Sadr

Sheikh Jabir Al-Khafai, an aide to Sadr, reiterated these instructions during his Friday sermon at the Kufa mosque, demanding that all followers of the Sadrist movement observe them and obey Sadr. He warned that some elements were attempting to "climb on the shoulders of the honourable movement" for their own personal interests.

Intense house-to-house fighting between Iraqi police and fighters north of Baghdad has killed 43 people, including 24 officers, the US military said. Iraqi officials, however, said 12 Iraqi officers were killed.

US soldiers later joined the fight, aiding in a counter-attack that left 18 fighters dead, the US military said on Friday.

Police fought back and US soldiers nearby were diverted from another mission, assisted by air cover.

One Iraqi civilian was also killed, eight fighters wounded, and 27 others captured, the military said.

The Iraqi police unit was based in Baquba, 60km northeast of Baghdad. The ambush took place at 6.30am local time (0330 GMT) on Thursday.

Also on Friday, US forces ventured into the Baghdad stronghold of Mahdi Army leader, Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, searching for a kidnapped US soldier, two days after another raid in the area stoked tensions with the Iraqi government.

Baghdad battle

Iraq's interior ministry, which commands the police, gave a slightly different version of Thursday's clash in north Baghdad, and said those killed included Abbas Al-Ameri, a police chief, and his brother.

Abdel-Karim Khalaf, a ministry spokesman, said forces moved into the area after learned of the presence of fighters who were behind the ambush on Monday of a convoy of buses carrying police recruits in which at least 15 were killed 25 wounded.

Khalf denied police had been surprised and put the death toll among officers at 12, with 19 fighters killed and 28 captured.

He described the enemy fighters as hardcore remnants of Saddam Hussein's former Baathist government joined by "Takfiri elements", a term for Islamic radicals that include groups such as al-Qaeda in Iraq.

The area around Baquba has seen heavy fighting in recent weeks between armed Shia and Sunni groups carrying out brutal revenge killings.

Bloodshed in Mosul

Meanwhile, four people were killed and five wounded in an attack on a van carrying Shias returning from the funeral of a relative in the city of Najaf, said a spokesman for the police force in surrounding Diyala province.

Fearing similar bloodshed, authorities enforced a vehicle ban in Mosul on Friday following threats from Sunni fighters who distributed leaflets at mosques on Thursday proclaiming the mixed Sunni-Kurdish city a part of an Islamic state declared earlier this month by an insurgent umbrella group, the Mujahidin Shura Council.

While the fighters declaration has been viewed primarily as a propaganda move, fighters aligned with the Shura Council have been suspected in recent deadly attacks in Mosul.

The city is a battleground between Sunni Arabs relocated there by the Saddam government and members of the Kurdish minority native to the region.

Sadr City clash

In other news, witnesses and two officials of the Mahdi Army said there was a strong US troop presence backed by air support in the northeast part of Sadr City on Friday. They reported clashes in the area but it was not immediately clear who was involved.

"It's ongoing operations specifically related to the search for the missing soldier," said US Lieutenant-Colonel Christopher Garver.

Al-Maliki on Thursday said Iraq's most notorious death squad leader had escaped a major US-led raid in Sadr City which the Americans said killed 10 "enemy fighters".

Wednesday's ground and air assault targeted Abu Deraa, a feared warlord held responsible for a rash of brutal sectarian killings and kidnappings of Iraqi Sunnis.

The Wednesday raid also targeted a mosque in connection with the hunt for the missing US soldier, who left the safety of the fortified Green Zone on Monday to visit a relative.

Al-Sadr's warning

In another development, al-Sadr has threatened rogue commanders in his Mahdi Army militia with the wrath of God, his principal mouthpiece told worshippers at prayer on Friday.

In recent weeks armed groups claiming allegiance to al-Sadr's movement have fought pitched battles with Iraqi security forces in two southern towns, Diwaniyah and Amara, despite calls from al-Sadr for restraint.

"This disobedience to the leadership has divided us and earned us multiple enemies," declared Sheikh Jaber al-Khafaji, the preacher who speaks for al-Sadr at the mosque in the central Iraqi town of Kufa.

"The directives of Moqtada al-Sadr in his speach during Eid prayers should not go unnoticed," he added, referring to the latest of al-Sadr's recent attempts to rein in his movement's more unruly cadres.

"If you do not obey, you will regret it. Indeed, I declare that you will be cursed. Sayid Moqtada al-Sadr is a blessing from God upon you and is your protector," Khafaji told the large crowd in this Shia area.

Many crimes against Iraq have been justified by the demonization of Saddam Hussein. Invasion was justified by claims that he possessed "weapons of mass destruction," had ties to al-Qaeda, and posed a threat to the territorial United States.

The claims turned out to be lies. There were no "weapons of mass destruction" or programs to develop them. There were no ties to al-Qaeda. He did not threaten U.S. territory.

Those who still support the occupation now say it was justified because Saddam Hussein was a "brutal dictator." One of the main complaints against him is that "he killed the Kurds." The usual reference is the Anfal campaign of the Iraqi army from February 23, 1988 to September 6, 1988. It is claimed that Anfal was a campaign of genocide. It can now be said that the "Anfal genocide" never happened. It is another lie.

Ironically it is the second of the illegal U.S.-run "trials" of Mr. Hussein in Baghdad that allows this conclusion. The facts and circumstances of the "trial" can be analyzed without any concession to the legitimacy of the "court." Nor, since it is illegal, is there any reason to wait for the "court’s" findings before reaching one’s own conclusions. Applicable principles of international law are presented in Appendix A.

Certain facts are not in dispute. The campaign took place in the late stages of the Iran-Iraq war. The Iraqi army fought units of the Iranian army in Northern Iraq. Kurdish guerillas called peshmerga allied with Iran against the government of their own country. In order to suppress the guerillas the Iraqi government displaced large numbers of Kurdish civilians from border areas.

Press reports say the current charge is genocide during Anfal. By any definition the crime of genocide means the extermination of large numbers of people. At first no definite number of civilian fatalities was given in news reports, but in September the "prosecution" was several times reported to say there were 182,000 deaths.

The "trial" on the Anfal charges began on August 21, 2006. There were 13 sessions of the "court" between that date and September 26, at which time it recessed.

In the press reports studied for this analysis no statement or presentation of methodology was reported. No systematic studies were reported. No sworn affidavits were reported. No expert testimony was reported. Evidence of this kind would have been front-page news. It can be concluded that no such evidence was introduced. See Appendix B for the tabulation of articles.

Instead all testimony was anecdotal. As an example, on August 22, the first day of testimony, a witness named Ali Mustapha Hama was heard. He testified to events in the village of Balisan on April 16, 1987. The BBC reported that he said "there was greenish smoke, and minutes later, a smell like rotten apples or garlic. He spoke of a newborn infant who was trying to 'smell life’, but breathed in the chemicals and died. Many others died too, he added. During cross-examination, defence lawyers asked Mr. Hama how he knew the aircraft were Iraqi, and prompted Hama to say he had helped shelter guerrillas in his village."

The death of an infant is a very bad thing. Still, the number of fatalities definitely averred by Mr. Hama is one. He also admitted that there was guerilla activity in his village. Genocide is a large-scale crime against civilians, meant to exterminate an ethnic group. Thus Mr. Hama’s testimony did nothing to establish genocide. Another witness heard the same day was not even reported to have made any definite statement of fatalities.

Between August 22 and September 26 the news reports speak of seventeen witnesses. Definite statements of fatalities came to a total of 43. Some of the fatalities could have overlapped. No attempt to differentiate between civilian and military casualties was reported.

Of the fifteen witnesses three admitted to having been peshmerga guerillas, whereas genocide is a crime against civilians. One of the three former guerillas, Moussa Abdullah Moussa, now lives in Tennessee. Another witness, Katrin Michael, now lives in Virginia.

One of the witnesses, Mahmoud Hama Aziz, testified on September 9 to 7 fatalities at an unstated location in 1987, prior to Anfal. The New York Times reported the next day that evidence bearing on Mr. Aziz’ testimony had been found in a mass grave discovered in 2004, whereas the "prosecution" claims investigations have been going on since 1991 (see Doebbler, below.) The timing of the "discovery" is so convenient as to raise still more doubts.

Twenty-one of the 43 fatalities including the Balisan incident occurred in 1987, before Anfal. That leaves at most 22 during the Anfal period or at times not stated. The question arises as to what happened to the other 181,978 of the 182,000 claimed victims. At this rate it will take about 689 years to account for the alleged fatalities.

Hence in the first month of proceedings the "prosecution" presented no case at all.

The original trial judge was removed for political reasons on September 20 (see below.) Later sessions descended from farce into chaos. Defense lawyers boycotted the "trial" on orders of Mr. Hussein. Anonymous "witnesses" gave testimony behind a screen; documents were stolen from defense attorney Badia Arif Izzat in the courtroom building, and so forth.

The prosecution has had all the time and opportunity needed to formulate a case. The alleged events occurred eighteen years ago. Northern Iraq has been out of Baghdad’s control since 1996 when the Clinton administration unilaterally imposed the "no-fly" zones on Iraq.

Nor has there been any lack of investigative expertise and money. The New York Times reported on July 1, 2004 that "The Federal Bureau of Investigation is leading the investigation, along with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and agents from the Justice Department." The NYT also said on July 20, 2005 that the U.S. had spent more than $35 million on the investigations.

In a case as intensely political as this it must be presumed that at the beginning the "prosecution" will present its case at its strongest. It presented a shambles. Moreover the scale of time and resources behind the "prosecution" removes any argument that a case could be made with more effort. There is only one way that is at all plausible, likely, or straightforward to explain the "prosecution’s" failure to even begin to make any case: there was no "Anfal genocide."

Other circumstances support the same conclusion.

The charges are not even clear. None of the cited news reports give more than the word "genocide." The specification of charges might answer some questions. A moderate effort found a document termed a "charging instrument" for the first "trial" of Mr. Hussein, the Dujail case.

Charges for the Anfal "trial" were not posted at the same site, however. Repeated internet searches using "charging instrument" and/or other search terms failed to find the corresponding prosecution statement for the Anfal "trial." Hence the "prosecution" case is not easily available. It is apparent that the Bush administration and the "prosecution" do not want their case to be known to the public.

The most basic and routine of defendant’s rights are violated. Defense attorney Curtis Doebbler writes:

The violations of unfair trial are too numerous to mention here, but include almost every provision in article 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights that could be violated at this juncture of the proceedings. . .

The prosecution alleges to have been collecting evidence since at least 1991 — which, of course, could only be true if it were the United States government doing the collecting — and has at least been doing so since April 2003 when dozens of American lawyers and Iraqis who had not lived in Iraq for years were shuttled in to build a case.

The defense lawyers, despite requesting visits with their client since December 2003 when he was detained, have to date not been allowed the confidential visits that are necessary to begin to prepare a defense.

No visits were allowed with the most senior lawyers until after the trial had started and at each visit American officials exercise the authority to read any materials brought into the visiting room despite the fact that all meetings remain under close audio and visual surveillance.

As if this were not enough, evidence has been withheld from the defense lawyers. They have been denied access to investigative hearings; they have been denied prior notice of witnesses, and they are prevented from even visiting the site of the alleged crime.

If any sound "prosecution" case was possible these abuses would be unnecessary.

Mr. Hussein’s defense team has been denied physical security despite repeated requests. During the first "trial" three of his attorneys were murdered. During the current "trial" legal assistant Abdel Monem Yassin Hussein was murdered. He was kidnapped on August 29. His body was found five days later. The murders of defense personnel argue further against the possibility of any "prosecution" case.

The blatantly political nature of the "trial" was exposed again on September 20, when puppet Iraqi "prime minister" Nuri al-Maliki removed judge Abdullah al-Amiri from the case. The reason for this outrageous abuse was reported by the New York Times on September 15 as follows:

One witness, a Kurdish farmer, testified that in 1988 he had pleaded with Mr. Hussein for the life of his wife and seven young children. He said a furious Mr. Hussein shouted, "Shut up and get out."

In court, Mr. Hussein jumped up to defend himself.

"Why did he try to see Saddam Hussein?" he asked the judge, referring to himself in the third person, as is his habit in court. "Wasn’t Saddam a dictator and an enemy to the Kurdish people, as they say?"

The judge replied: "I will answer you: you are not a dictator. Not a dictator," he repeated. "You were not a dictator."

Mr. Hussein, smiling, replied, "Thank you."



Five days later the judge was removed. If the alleged events of 1988 had really occurred it is extremely unlikely that the puppet "government" would again have discredited itself and the "trial" with this shameless interference.

Even more extraordinarily, an AP report on August 21 said that "the trial does not deal with the most notorious gassing — the March 1988 attack on Halabja that killed an estimated 5,000 Kurds. That incident will be part of a separate investigation by the Iraqi High Tribunal." The report did not say why Halabja is to be treated separately.

The Halabja incident is the biggest thing in the "genocide" case. The "prosecution" has dismembered its own case. It is trying to carry water by knocking the bottom out of its own bucket. The omission strongly suggests that there is no more to the Halabja story than there is to the "Anfal genocide."

* * *

The most serious doubts arise repeatedly that any valid case against Mr. Hussein can be made. Just as in the notorious "Downing Street Memo" minutes of a July, 2002 meeting of the British cabinet, "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

In the United States the burden of proof is on the prosecution to prove its case "beyond reasonable doubt." The defects of the "prosecution’s" case are so great as to constitute overwhelming doubt. There is no reason at all to believe that genocide was committed in the Anfal campaign. Only one conclusion can be drawn: the "Anfal genocide" never happened.

* * *

In all of the years of its war with Iraq U.S. imperialism has had only one significant political success: the demonization of Saddam Hussein. The "brutal, corrupt dictator" line is heard across the political spectrum. Investigation would seem unnecessary.

One result is that to a great degree antiwar opinion sees the war in Iraq as no more than a war for oil. It is insufficient to stop without looking at Iraq, but that is what almost always happens.

Firstly, the oil already belongs to Iraq. From its side the war has always been a war for sovereignty, i.e., its rights of national self-determination. Since occupation it has also become a war for independence.

"War for oil" also raises further questions. There are many ways to get oil. War is the worst way to get it. The question is why U.S. imperialism has resorted to war. There are many countries that have oil. The United Arab Emirates has almost as much oil as Iraq but nothing is ever heard about it. The question is why Iraq is different.

Again the answer is that modern pre-occupation Iraq always fully asserted its rights of sovereignty. The war is Iraq is an unjust war for oil versus a just war for sovereignty and independence.

The highest questions of any war are questions of historical content and direction, questions of just and unjust causes. Antiwar opinion is most of the time not even aware of these questions. More than anything else it is the demonization of Saddam Hussein that denies the masses a full understanding of the war.

The revolutionary significance of Iraq’s great struggle disappears. The linkage of the struggle in Iraq to that of Palestine disappears. Too often the need to support the just and heroic Iraqi resistance becomes lost; too often the necessity to immediately demand unconditional withdrawal of all foreign forces as objectively the only way to end the war becomes lost.

Very little about Iraq and nothing at all about Saddam Hussein should ever be accepted on the basis of authority. There are no such authorities in the U.S. government. There are no such authorities in the U.S. media. There are no such academic authorities. There are no such authorities in the antiwar movement. Throw away all "authoritative" ideas about Saddam Hussein!

There are only determinations: sound methods, sound concepts, facts and logic, history. On method one can, for instance, look at the Iraqi side directly. Daily accounts of resistance activities are posted in English at http://www.albasrah.net/pages/mod.php?header=res1&mod=gis&rep=rep. Political statements of the Iraqi Baath Arab Socialist Party and pre-occupation speeches of President Saddam Hussein are posted at http://www.al-moharer.net/qiwa_shabiya/qiwa.html.

The war will end and can only end in the defeat of imperialism and its expulsion from the Persian Gulf. The people of Iraq are stronger than imperialism. Though the whole world shatter, and well it may, in the end the people of Iraq will win.

Six Iraqis, including three women and two children, have been killed in a US air strike in the city of Ramadi in western Iraq, a doctor said.

Kamal al-Ani, a doctor at Ramadi hospital, said the bodies of six members of a single family killed in the attack had been brought in, before being released to relatives for burial.

Police Brigadier Hamid Hamad Shuka confirmed that there had been an air strike in the south of the city at dawn. He said five civilians were killed in the hit.

Asked about the report, the US military said that the troops came under attack several times on Friday and responded with tank fire and "precision munitions" - a phrase commonly associated with air-launched missiles.

US forces killed "numerous insurgents", including some waiting in an ambush and gunmen firing at a US outpost, the military said.

"Coalition forces also noted two unexplained explosions that were possible IED and rocket-propelled grenade misfires," it said, adding that it was not able to assess civilian casualties in the incident.

Asked to clarify whether the US military was referring to the same incident as reported by Iraqi officials, a spokeswoman said there were no reports of airstrikes around dawn on Saturday.

'Aggressive approach'

Earlier this week, a senior US general had said that the US and Iraqi security forces were taking "an aggressive, offensive approach" to reclaim Ramadi from fighters.

Last week, dozens of al Qaeda-linked gunmen took to the streets to announce that the city was joining an Islamic state comprising Iraq's mostly Sunni Arab provinces.

Shuka said US forces had taken control of the street where the fighters made their demonstration, ordering some families to evacuate their homes and setting up sniper positions.

On Friday, gunmen attacked three military positions in the city with rocket-propelled grenades, mortar rounds and machine-gun fire, police said.

Residents reported further clashes on Saturday and said that the US troops were using loudspeakers to order people to stay in their homes. The US forces also reportedly blocked entrances to the city.

Soldiers captured

In Udhaim, 50km north of Baquba, gunmen at a fake checkpoint seized 11 Iraqi soldiers travelling in a minibus.The soldiers, who were wearing civilian clothes, were taken out of the bus at gunpoint after the gunmen found their military IDs.

On Thursday, 28 policemen were killed in an ambush near Baquba. That attack followed a separate ambush on Sunday on a convoy of buses in which 13 police recruits were killed and several more were reported kidnapped.

In Baghdad, one person was killed and 35 wounded when a rocket hit an outdoor market in the southern neighbourhood of Dura, according to police. A second person was killed and nine wounded when a bomb went off in a minibus in an eastern Baghdad district, another police spokesman said.

Abu Zaineb, 56, is one of the most well known small arms dealers in Baghdad. He sells guns under the table in his upmarket shop in Mansour, one of the capital’s most prestigious districts.

“People need to protect themselves from the ongoing violence in Iraq and my job is to support them doing that. With the official prohibition on selling weapons, we are being forced to work through the black market. I am just trying to help people stay safe and not become victims of sectarian violence,” Abu Zaineb said.

He says the AK-47 Kalashnikov sub-machine gun is the most popular weapon for his customers and costs around US $100. Handguns and assault rifles are also available on the black market. Most of these small arms are smuggled into the country from Iran and Syria, according to the shopkeeper.

This week, from 24 to 30 October, is United Nations Disarmament Week. While the UN has called on all governments to “increase public understanding of the urgent tasks of disarmament”, little progress has been made in Iraq.

Despite government efforts to stop the sale of weapons in Iraq, many shopkeepers are involved in this lucrative black market business and are selling guns to militia fighters and insurgents also. The result is a grisly daily death toll.

There was a 50 percent increase in the number of violent deaths in Iraq over the past two months compared to the same period last year, according to the central morgue, which cited sectarian violence as the reason for the increase.

Disarming militias is part of the country’s 24-point national reconciliation plan proposed by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on 25 June. However, many armed Iraqi factions have rejected the proposal.

Earlier this month, US government officials urged the Iraqi government to take immediate action to disarm the militias, but this has yet to happen. On 16 October, al-Maliki said in a press interview that the government will not force militias to disarm until later this year or early next year, despite escalating violence in Baghdad fuelled by death squads and sectarian clashes.

Disarming is essential

Iraqi specialists say that despite dialogue with militia and insurgent groups, the government has not tackled the problem.

Lt. Col. Khalid Jua’ad, a professor at the Institute for Military and Strategic Studies in Baghdad, told IRIN on Thursday that the delay in disarming the militias and insurgent groups will increase violence.

“Disarming militias should be the first step taken by the government to prevent more deaths,” he said. “Weapons in Iraq are used not to protect [citizens] but to promote violence. About 25 militias and 18 insurgent groups are operating in Iraq today and this is unacceptable.”

The Iraqi Ministry of Defence refused to comment on the disarmament process.

Adnan al-Dulaimi, head of the Iraqi Accordance Front and the most prominent Sunni member of the Iraqi parliament, has called on the government to resign if it fails to disarm Shi’ite militias, such as the Mahdi Army and Badr Brigade, two of the most prominent.

Many Sunni districts in the capital have been under constant attack by such militias since February this year, when a revered Shi’ite shrine was bombed in the northern city of Samarra. In Sunni areas of Baghdad now, some local police stations remain closed for fear of being attacked.

“We were forced to ask the US troops to help in protecting such districts because the local police were unable to stop militia action,” al-Dulaimi said. “More people will die and there will be more revolt against the Iraqi government. We have to find a solution to minimise this increasing violence.”

However, Shi’ite factions said that disarming their militias will just open the door for Sunni insurgents, especially al-Qaeda, to kill members of the Shi’ite community.

“We are not going to disarm our militia because we are just trying to protect our brothers [against Sunni insurgents] who cannot protect themselves. The Iraqi government is not able to maintain security in Iraq and we will not depend on their slow action,” said Ali al-Khalifa, a spokesman for Shi’ite militia leader Muqtada al-Sadr.

“We do not want to be the next victims of insurgents and we will only lay down our guns when insurgents do the same,” al-Khalifa said.Baghdad residents say too much time is being taken to resolve the issue.

“Corpses can be seen every day on the streets of Baghdad. We never know when we wake up in the morning whether we are going to be alive [by the end of the day] or whether a militia member will shoot us because we are Sunni or whatever,” Salam al-Saturi, a shopkeeper in the capital, said.

“Today we do not know who is on our side and who is against us. When you are out on the streets of the capital, you can expect that anytime someone will come and kill you just because of your religious belief,” Abu Maruan, a painter in Baghdad, said.

Mariam, 16, relives the day her father in Baghdad sold her off as a domestic worker in one of the prosperous Gulf nations. Instead, she was forced into the sex trade.

“I was a virgin and didn’t understand what sex was. I was told that they [the traffickers] were going to get good money for my first night with an old local man who paid for my virginity. He was aggressive and hit me all the time,” Mariam, who refused to reveal her real name, told IRIN.

Thousands of Iraqi women are being taken advantage of by unscrupulous sex worker traffickers seeking to exploit young girls’ desperate socio-economic situation for profit, United Nations agencies have reported.

In Mariam’s case, she was taken to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and kept in a house with 20 young girls, all of them sex workers, she said.Before she left Iraq, she and her three sisters were being cared for by her father. Their mother was killed during the US-led invasion of the country in 2003.

Mariam said her father couldn’t cope with looking after the children on his own and wanted her to go abroad, particularly given the increasing insecurity and daily violence in Iraq.

In November 2005, a member of a trafficking ring offered Mariam’s father an advance payment of US $6,000 for her, saying she would work for a family in Dubai. He was promised that his daughter would be returned to Iraq after finishing a one-year contract.

Mariam said she faced daily threats in Dubai from the traffickers, warning her not to try to leave. However, she managed to escape and is now back in Baghdad being looked after by a local NGO, the Organisation for Women's Freedom.

Thousands traded for sex work

The teenager’s story is not uncommon. While accurate statistics are hard to come by, the Women’s Freedom NGO estimates that nearly 3,500 Iraqi women have gone missing since the US-led occupation of Iraq began in 2003 and that there is a high chance many have been traded for sex work. It says 25 percent of these women have been trafficked abroad since the start of 2006, many unaware of their fate.

“People are desperate to get money to support their families … just to have something to eat. If the government does not act on this issue, more women will be abused outside Iraq,” Nuha Salim, spokeswoman for the NGO, said.

The Iraqi government says it is investigating cases of women being trafficked and has arrested some traffickers, but tackling insecurity in the country is its main priority.

Apart from the need for government action, women’s-rights activists say that as long as there is a market for women abroad, the problem will continue and worsen. They call for more action against countries that turn a blind eye to the sex trade.

“Women are being taken outside of Iraq and are losing what is most precious to them - their dignity,” Salim said.

Trafficking and prostitution are illegal in the six nations of the Gulf, although the region is a popular and common destination for trafficked women. An estimated 10,000 women from sub-Saharan Africa, eastern Europe, Asia and parts of the Middle East may be victims of sex trafficking in the UAE, according to a US State Department report entitled ‘Trafficking in Persons’, published in June.

Gulf gangs

Sharla Musabih is a human-rights activist in Dubai who runs a shelter for abused and trafficked women. She says sex workers in the UAE operate predominantly from hotels and organised gangs are behind much of the trade.

“It’s not organised in the UAE but there is an organised mafia outside [the country] that owns hotels in the UAE and they organise it … But, on the other hand, the big guys [Emirati nationals] involved in immigration are really concerned and are trying to do something about it and they care about it.”

Musabih said it was common for girls to be promised domestic work and be forced into sex work. “I’ve heard the girls pay $10,000 initially to come to the UAE. They get paid anything from 20 dirhams [$6] to 20,000 [$6,000] a night, depending on the client.”

According to the US State Department report, the UAE government has failed to address the problem adequately, although inroads have been made.

“Instead, many victims [of trafficking] are jailed along with criminals and deported,” the report reads. “Prosecutions for sex trafficking are extremely low relative to the scope of the problem.”

The report states that despite 100 reported complaints of trafficking for sexual exploitation in 2005, the UAE government reported only 22 convictions for sex-trafficking crimes.

However, the report praised UAE authorities for the closer screening of visa applications by its embassies in source countries; for having set up a human-trafficking division to investigate trafficking crimes; and for training police, prosecutors, judges, and other government officials in combating trafficking.

No one was available from the Dubai immigration and police department to comment on this issue.

Trafficked to Syria

The UAE is not the only destination for trafficked Iraqi women. Syria is increasingly becoming a popular destination for traffickers, according to humanitarian agencies.

A report released in May by the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR), the UN’s Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the World Food Programme (WFP) spoke of “organised networks dealing with the sex trade” in Syria. It made a correlation between the deteriorating conditions of Iraqi citizens and an increase in prostitution and trafficking of Iraqi sex workers.

"It is not possible to say how big the trafficking problem from Iraq to Syria is but we know it does exist," said Ann Maymann, a protection officer with UNHCR in Damascus. "It is something that has been kept quiet because people are afraid to talk about it."

Local activists in Syria say much more needs to be done to protect this vulnerable and increasingly exploited community.Last September, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) co-hosted a workshop with the Ministry of Interior to raise awareness on counter-trafficking.

Maria Rumman, IOM chief of mission in Damascus, said the organisation was assisting a Syrian government committee established to draft a counter-trafficking law, and was waiting for international donor funds for a proposed shelter to assist victims of trafficking. Without such a facility, she said, surveying the number of people trafficked into Syria was impossible.

"The government agrees there is a need for new legislation and for a shelter," said Rumman. "But we have not received any reply from donors, including the US, for a year. The minute we have any donor commitment we will begin."

The military operations that began in Sinai on the evening of 29 October have a small prelude which I would like to share with the reader. It was a small prelude, a political prelude that took place at the headquarters of the United Nations in New York City, in early October -- the same month that was later to witness the military operations in Sinai.

In October, the Security Council debated the question of the Suez Canal, concluding by adopting six principles towards a peaceful settlement of the issue, and on the basis of which negotiations would be conducted, while guaranteeing free and efficient passage through the Canal.

During and following the Security Council sessions, several meetings took place between UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold, Dr Mahmoud Fawzi, the Egyptian minister of foreign affairs and his British and French counterparts, Selwyn Lloyd and Christian Pineau. While these were not the negotiations called for by the Security Council, they were without a doubt the kind of exploratory contracts that by necessity precede any negotiations.

The New York meetings concluded by reaching agreement on certain points, and with the participants agreeing to meet again soon for further discussion of the issues, the time and place of the next meeting to be arranged by Mr Hammarskjold.

A few days later, the UN secretary-general sent the Egyptian government a projected location and date for the upcoming meeting.

The location was Geneva.The date was Monday, 29 October.

Upon receiving his message, the Egyptian government immediately notified the secretary- general that it would attend the proposed meeting, whereas the British and French governments stalled. Then news came from London and Paris indicating that the matter involved more than playing for time.

It soon became evident that London and Paris were attempting to find excuses to evade the scheduled date. The British and French governments had evidently scheduled a different meeting for 29 October. It was to convene in the Sinai Desert -- not in Geneva -- and they did not intend to meet with Egypt, but with Israel.

The aim was not to solve the problem of the Suez Canal. Rather, the new tripartite meeting aimed to annihilate Egypt -- totally.

This is the truth which the parties to the tripartite conspiracy cannot deny... The issue was not about a canal that crosses Egypt. It was about Egypt -- with all that it represents today, with all that it seeks and stands for...

The issue is about a country striving for independence.

The issue is about a country striving for power.

The issue is about a country breaking the arms boycott.

The issue is about a country aspiring to freedom for itself and others.

The issue is about a country wanting to liberate its economy.

The issue is about Arab nationalism, an ideology which has engulfed our entire region.

Imperialism could not let this happen.

The tribal chiefs, in traditional robes and chequered headdresses, emerged from the dust stirred up by their convoy of pick-up trucks and walked towards the big white tent, gesturing welcomes to each other as they sat.

Accompanied by about 500 clansmen and a gaggle of local journalists, the 35 Sunni sheikhs - from Mosul, Tikrit, Samarra and Hawija - converged last week on Hindiya, on the scrappy western edges of Kirkuk, to swear their undying opposition to "conspiracies" to partition Iraq and to pledge allegiance to their president, Saddam Hussein.

Under banners exalting the man now standing trial in Baghdad for war crimes and genocide, the gathering heard speeches from prominent northern Iraqi sheikhs, Sunni Arab politicians and self-declared leaders of the Ba'ath party calling for the former dictator's release.

"If the Iraqi government wants national reconciliation to succeed and for the violence to end, they have to quickly release the president and end the occupation," said Sheikh Abdul Rahman Munshid, of the Obeidi tribe. "But most important of all," he added, "Kirkuk must never become part of Kurdistan. It is an Iraqi city, and we will take all routes to prevent the divisions of Iraq."

The heated debate about federalism in Iraq is no better exemplified than in Kirkuk. Though largely free of the sectarian wars taking place in Baghdad and its surrounding area, observers say the ethnic faultlines running through the city, which lies atop Iraq's second largest oilfield, make it a ticking time bomb that could pit Kurd against Arab and draw in neighbours such as Iran and Turkey.

"There are few more sensitive issues in Iraq today than what happens to Kirkuk," said a western diplomat in Iraq who works closely with the issue. "All eyes are on it, and all the ingredients for either consensual agreement or a devastating discord are there. If Kirkuk survives, then there's hope for Iraq."

As if to reinforce that message, within hours of the Sunni gathering a wave of suicide bombs rocked Kirkuk's city centre, including one in a crowded market and another in front of a women's teaching college. At least 15 civilians were killed and scores wounded.

Despite the oil riches that lie beneath, above ground Kirkuk appears a forlorn and neglected city. Street after street consists of humble two-storey dwellings with barely a modern building in sight. Litter is strewn everywhere, and there are huge queues at the petrol pumps. The tumble-down shops and market stalls in the centre of the city sell cheap consumer goods from Iran and Turkey.

The city's ancient citadel lies in ruins. The governor, Abdul Rahman Mustapha, a Kurd, blames the dilapidated state of the city on years of Ba'athist misrule. Neither does he have a good word for the current government in Baghdad. "They have ignored us and set so many obstacles in the path of our progress and reconstruction," he said.

Only now, three years after the end of the war, is money beginning to filter through for much-needed infrastructure work. In partnership with the US Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) and US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), the provincial government has undertaken projects to provide fresh water to the mostly Arab south of the city, as well as garbage collection and treatment and the renovation of schools.

"A good sign is that Kurds, Turkomans and Arabs still eat in the same restaurants, and mix together," said Mr Mustapha. Yet, as with so many other of Iraq's major cities, the trauma of history is close to the surface. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s the Ba'ath party systematically drove out as many as 200,000 Kurds and Turkomans from urban and rural Kirkuk to tip the city's ethnic balance towards the Arabs and ensure strategic control of the oil fields.

After the fall of Saddam's regime, thousands of Kurds returned to the city, demanding the restitution of their land and property and the right to vote for Kirkuk to join the Kurdish autonomous region in the north. The Iraqi constitution promises to remove Arab settlers, who would receive compensation, and return Kurds to Kirkuk - an explosive issue for many non-Kurds.

"It will be disastrous," said Ali Mehdi, a Turkoman member of the provincial council. "The people won't accept the rule of the Kurdish parties. A civil war could break out any minute."

He said Kirkuk should achieve special independent status unallied to any regional blocs. Kurdish leaders insist, however, that they are neither after ethnic supremacy nor Kirkuk's oil, which could give them an economic base for future independence. Instead they are seeking to right historical wrongs.

"We want to see the issue resolved in a legal and peaceful way, as designated in the constitution," said Fuad Hussein, a senior aide to the Kurdish president Massoud Barzani. "Kirkuk is historically part of Kurdistan, but we will make sure it is well run and safe for everyone regardless of race or religion."

But he expressed dismay at the Sunni leaders' meeting. "Ba'athists meeting openly under the nose of Americans is not a good sign for the future," he said.

Relatively peaceful in the first two years after the fall of Saddam - defying observers who said civil war would start here - Kirkuk is witnessing an alarming increase in bloodshed as the political tensions rise. The wave of violence is terrifying residents and testing to the limit the fragile relations among its Kurdish, Arab and Turkoman residents.

The US military in Kirkuk says the city has been hit by 20 suicide bombs and 63 roadside bombs in the past three months. Local police and community leaders have been assassinated and politicians attacked. This despite a series of security sweeps by US and Iraqi forces and the digging of a large trench ringing Kirkuk's southern approaches, designed to funnel traffic into the city through official Iraqi army checkpoints.

Colonel Patrick Stackpole, who commands 5,000 US troops in a province of about one and a half million people, said the "violence is mainly by outsiders, though undoubtedly they have facilitators inside the city". "Jihadis from east and west, belonging to groups such as Ansar al-Islam and Ansar al-Sunnah, are targeting the city, trying to stoke civil war," he said. "But there's also a large element of former regime loyalists who don't want the city to succeed."

Nevertheless, he described himself as "guardedly optimistic" and offered rare praise for the province's security forces. "They are taking over more and more functions, leading operations, and performing more effectively without the scale of problems of corruption and disloyalty seen in other forces in Iraq ," he said. "We haven't seen death squads."

The verdict of President Saddam Hussein’s first trial and that of seven former Iraqi leaders- the Al Dujail case- due on October 16th has been postponed till November 5 in order "to complete verifications".

Actually the postponement has been required by Bush’s public relations consultants in the hope that the announcement of the capital sentence on the Iraqi President, his half-brother, Barzan Al-Tikriti, former head of the secret services before 1984 and the Vice-President, Taha Yassin Ramadan, will help the Republicans secure more votes in the coming half-term elections to be held …two days later.

Unless an unforeseen event, the sentences will be enforced within 30 days. By hanging.

On October 3rd, at Managua, Donald Rumsfeld expressed his opposition to lengthy legal proceedings against Saddam Hussein. He wanted them to be swift.

The other charges – the Anfal trial- brought against Saddam Hussein will be tried and capital sentences passed on …..posthumously. This method would, in the eyes of the Americans, blur the responsibility of the Western leaders, especially the huge responsibility of Rumsfeld himself, in the deliveries of arms to Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war.

The origin of the combat gas used by both belligerents at Halabja will not be discussed nor the amount of kickbacks paid to political parties in France, the States and elsewhere…

The Court as a battlefield

Whatever our views on President Saddam Hussein, it is a fact that the war of aggression on Iraq is regarded as illegal and the arrest of its leaders, an illegal act. The verdict that will be passed on November 5 by "the Green Zone Magistrates" will have no legal standing.

At the outset, the Dujail case was to set an example, open to the public and aired in full. It has never been fair, transparent or impartial. And yet all had been rehearsed beforehand in detail with fake court sessions.

The magistrates selected by Salem Chalabi, business lawyer and Ahmed Chalabi’s nephew, leader of the Iraqi National Council (1) had been trained in Great Britain. However, outside pressures, the expanding chaos in Iraq and the pugnacity of the Iraqi President and Barzan al Takriti turned the court into a battlefield.

The well-groomed performance, staged by a communication firm linked to the Pentagon, evolved into to a mockery of justice. To begin with, Salem Chalabi was accused of the murder of the General Director of the Iraqi Ministry of Finances.

He is on the run. The magistrates showed outright bias and the defence counsels had never advance access to all detail of the prosecution’s case – 36 tons of accusing evidences collected by FBI agents without any …..knowledge of Arabic- and were never in a position to check whether the documents they received were genuine.

Khalil al Douleimi’s house, Saddam Hussein’s lead lawyer, was searched by US Special Forces and his files were confiscated. The defence lawyers were threatened to "be cut up into pieces" by "justice" minister Malek Dohane al-Hassan.

Several were assassinated. At court sessions, anonymous witnesses were concealed behind curtains. Magistrates resigned or were dismissed and replaced off-hand. The selection of journalists allowed to report on the trial was one-sided.

Last, the declarations of the accused, in particular of Saddam Hussein, have been truncated before being dispatched. Amnesty International which cannot be suspected of sympathies for the former Iraqi President says: "The Dujail trial …has been sullied by serious breaches which question the capacity of the Court, as it stands, to administer justice in an equitable manner, under the general human law and standards of international due process" (2). Could it be otherwise?

The failed attempt on the life of Saddam Hussein, in Dujail in 1982, was masterminded in Iran by the al-Dawa party which today is at the helm. For its chiefs who have little concern for Western law the trial is just there to avenge its dead and to mobilize its militants.

Rivers of blood

On March 14, 2006, President Saddam Hussein called on all Iraqis to "support the resistance instead of slaughtering each and every one". If civil war befalls Iraq, he insists, they would live "under darkness and in rivers of blood". Judge Raouf Abdel Rahman; a hardliner, expelled the public from the court and warned him not to talk "politics" then he adjourned the trial.

Though there are similarities, a civil war is not yet occurring in Iraq. A war of liberation and a religious or ethnic strife are taking place. The Resistance hits the occupations forces and its collaborators while the US army shoots blindly. The pro-independence Kurds grab as much territory as they can from the Arabs and the Turcoman. The pro-Iran death squads carry out religious cleansing. Al Qaida kills Shias. The US secret services and Ahmed Chalabi pour oil over the fire through atrocious attacks and provocations such as the destruction of the Samara shrine.

Moqtada Sadr’s Medhi Army tries to compete with the Iran-oriented Badr Group. Families from one side take revenge on the opposite side and vice versa. Blackmails, killings by the thousand, rapes, robberies, kidnappings, vendetta, tortures of all sorts, expulsions are what the Iraqis have to live with every day. The number of violent deaths since the invasion is much higher that what the Baathists were accused of by theirs detractors. And unfortunately, it is not over….

Many Iraqis lament at the loss of the security they enjoyed under Saddam Hussein. The dreadful time of embargo seems peaceful compared to what they endure today. That in Tikrit, 3000 persons demonstrated to claim the release of their President is understandable: it is his home town. (3).

But more than 300 tribal leaders among them Sheikh Turki Hajim al-Ubaydi of the Al Ubayd (1,5 million members) demand his comeback to power (4) and some others, in the province of Kirkuk, declare that it is only then that Iraqis would reconcile (5). This should not be taken lightly.

If, as expected, the death sentence is reached on Nov; 5, 2006, nothing will tie the hand of the executioner. Saddam Hussein is under no illusion as to his fate. He said that he wishes to die by a bullet as befits a Commander in Chief of the Iraqi Armed Forces rather than by hanging as 57% of Americans wanted in March last (6).

For many Iraqis, the death under these circumstances of a man who is a legitimate symbol of their Nation would open wide the doors of Hell. Civil war in Iraq would then be the bloodiest of all times.

THE cultural treasures of Iraq — the birthplace of writing, codified law, mathematics, medicine and astronomy — are being obliterated as looters take advantage of the country’s bloody chaos.

Fourteen of the world’s leading archaeologists have written to the President and Prime Minister of the country, demanding immediate action to stem the vandalism after seeing photographs of sites left pockmarked by enormous craters.

Among examples in the letter, seen yesterday by The Times, was a Babylonian sculpture of a lion dating from about 1700BC that lost its head because the terracotta shattered as looters tried to remove it.

Another was the destruction of the Ana Minaret on the Euphrates about 190 miles (310km) west of Baghdad, revered for 1,000 years as a unique construction. It was blown up by Islamic extremists apparently for fear that it would be used as an American observation post.

In 1986 the minaret, an 85ft (26m) stone structure dating from the 6th century, was threatened by the waters of the al-Qadisiya dam project. Saddam Hussein ordered his military to dismantle it and transport it in 18 sections to a new site on a plateau above the lake.

The archaeologists say that the unparalleled heritage, especially that of ancient Mesopotamia, must be saved. The land — the site of the cities of Ur, Babylon and Nineveh — is the cradle of modern civilisation.

"As individuals who have done research for years in Iraq, who have taught its great history and culture, and who have made great efforts to call attention to the potential and real damage to Iraq’s cultural heritage due to war and its aftermath, we ask you to ensure the safety of the museums, archaeological sites, and standing monuments in the entire country," the letter says.

About 90 per cent of Iraq’s archaeological sites are still underground and a wealth of temples and palaces that have yet to be excavated are being targeted by looters.

Digging several metres below ground, they are leaving a landscape that has been likened to the surface of the Moon. The signatories include McGuire Gibson, Professor of Mesopotamian Archaeology at the University of Chicago; Robert McC. Adams, Secretary Emeritus of the Smithsonian Institution, and Leon DeMeyer, Rector Emeritus at the University of Ghent, in Belgium.

They are calling for the Antiquities Guards, who were recruited and trained to protect the ancient sites in the countryside, to be kept as a force and increased in number.

The archaeologists have learnt that the guards were no longer being paid.

They are also calling for the holdings of the Iraq National Museum to be be kept intact. There are fears that the antiquities could be split up if the country is partitioned.

Professor Gibson said that damage done to the great cities of Sumer and Babylon had been "very extensive".

The city of Larsa — a Babylonian capital from about 1900-1800BC — bears tracks from diggers that are being used to scrape up the site and carry the dirt to the side where it is sifted for objects. The city of Isin — a capital from 2000-1900BC — has been pitted, some holes going as deep as 10 metres (33ft), and there are tunnels running out from the pits.

Professor Gibson said: "This damage is so severe that archaeologists may never return to the site."

Other important cities that have been extensively damaged include Umma, Zabalam, Adab, Shuruppak and Umm al-Hafriyat. "All of these are important for the history and culture of the Sumerians and Babylonians," he said.

Precisely where the looted antiquities are going remains a mystery, although some objects are known to have been offered to wealthy collectors in the Gulf and the Far East.

Several months before a U.S. construction foreman named John Owen quit in disgust over what he said was blatant abuse of foreign laborers hired to build the sprawling new U.S. embassy in Baghdad, Rory Mayberry witnessed similar events when he flew to Kuwait from his home in Myrtle Creek, Ore.

The gravelly-voiced, easygoing U.S. Army veteran had previously worked in Iraq for Halliburton and the private security company Danubia. Missing the action and the big paychecks U.S. contractors draw there, Mayberry snagged a $10,000-month job with MSDS consulting company.

MSDS is a two-person, minority-owned consulting company that assists U.S. State Department managers in Washington with procurement programming. Never before had the firm offered medical services or worked in Iraq, but First Kuwaiti – Owen's employer – hired MSDS on the recommendation of Jim Golden, the State Department contract official overseeing the embassy project. Within days, an agreement worth hundreds of thousands of dollars for medical care was signed.

The 45-year-old Mayberry, a former emergency medical technician in the U.S. Army who worked as a funeral director in Oregon, responded to a help-wanted ad placed by MSDS. The plan was that he would work as a medic attending to the construction crews on the work site in Baghdad.

Like Owen, Mayberry immediately sensed things weren't right when he boarded a First Kuwaiti flight on March 15 to Baghdad.

At the airport in Kuwait City, Mayberry said, he saw a person behind a counter hand First Kuwaiti managers a passenger manifest, an envelope of money, and a stack of boarding passes to Dubai. The managers then handed out the boarding passes to Mayberry and 50 or so new First Kuwaiti laborers, mostly Filipinos.

"Everyone was told to tell customs and security that they were flying to Dubai," Mayberry said in an interview. Once the group passed the guards, they went upstairs and waited by the McDonald's for First Kuwaiti staff to unlock a door – Gate 26 – that led to an unmarked, aging white 52-seat jet.

"All the workers had their passports taken away by First Kuwaiti," Mayberry claimed, and while he knew the plane was bound for Baghdad, he's not so sure the others were aware of their destination. The Asian laborers began asking questions about why they were flying north and the jet wasn't flying east over the ocean, he said. "I think they thought they were going to work in Dubai."

One former First Kuwaiti supervisor acknowledged that the company holds passports of many workers in Iraq – a violation of U.S. contracting.

"All of the passports are kept in the offices," said one company insider who requested anonymity for fear of financial and personal retribution. As for distributing Dubai boarding passes for Baghdad flights, "It's because of the travel bans," he explained. Mayberry believes that migrant workers from the Philippines, India, and Nepal are especially vulnerable to employers like First Kuwaiti because their countries have little or no diplomatic presence in Iraq.

"If you don't have your passport or an embassy to go to, what you do to get out of a bad situation?" he asked. "How can they go to the U.S. State Department for help if First Kuwaiti is building their embassy?"

Owen had already been working at the embassy site since late November when Mayberry arrived. The two never crossed paths, but both share similar complaints about management of the project and brutal treatment of the laborers that, at times, numbered as many as 2,500. Most are from the Philippines, India, and Pakistan. Others are from Egypt and Turkey.

The number of workers with injuries and ailments stunned Mayberry. He went to work immediately after and stayed busy around the clock for days.

Four days later, First Kuwaiti pulled him off the job after he requested an investigation of two patients who had died before he arrived from what he suspected was medical malpractice. Mayberry also recommended that the health clinics be shut down because of unsanitary conditions and mismanagement.

"There hadn't been any follow-up on medical care. People were walking around intoxicated on pain relievers with unwrapped wounds, and there were a lot of infections," he recalled. "The idea that there was any hygiene seemed ridiculous. I'm not sure they were even bathing."

In reports made available to the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Army, and First Kuwaiti, Mayberry listed dozens of concerns about the clinics, which he found lacking in hot water, disinfectant, hand-washing stations, properly supplied ambulances, and communication equipment. Mayberry also complained that workers' medical records were in total disarray or nonexistent, the beds were dirty, and the support staff hired by First Kuwaiti was poorly trained.

The handling of prescription drugs especially bothered him. Many of the drugs that originated from Iraq and Kuwait were unsecured, disorganized, and unintelligibly labeled, he said in one memo. He found that the medical staff frequently misdiagnosed patients. Prescription pain killers were being handed out "like a candy store … and then people were sent back to work."

Mayberry warned that the practice could cause addiction and safety hazards. "Some were on the construction site climbing scaffolding 30 feet off the ground. I told First Kuwaiti that you don't give painkillers to people who are running machinery and working on heavy construction and they said 'that's how we do it.'"

The sloppy handling of drugs may have led to the two deaths, Mayberry speculates. One worker, age 25, died in his room. The second, in his mid-30s, died at the clinic because of heart failure. Both deaths may be "medical homicide," Mayberry says, because the patients may have been negligently prescribed improper drug treatment.

If the State Department investigated, Mayberry knows nothing of the outcome. Two State Department officials with project oversight responsibilities did not return phone calls or e-mails inquiring about Mayberry's allegations. The reports may have been ignored, not because of his complaints, but because Mayberry is a terrible speller, a problem compounded by an Arabic translation program loaded on his computer, he says.

Owen's account of his seven months on the job paints a similar picture to Mayberry's. Health and safety measures were essentially nonexistent, he says. Not once did he witness a safety meeting. Once an Egyptian worker fell, broke his back, and was sent home. No one ever heard from him again. "The accident might not have happened if there was a safety program and he had known how to use a safety harness," Owen said.

State Department officials supervising the project are aware of many such events, but apparently did nothing, he said. Once when 17 workers climbed the wall of the construction site to escape, a State Department official helped round them up and put them in "virtual lockdown," Owen said.

Just before he resigned, hundreds of Pakistani workers went on strike in June and beat up a Lebanese manager whom they accused of harassing them. Owen estimates that 375 laborers were then sent home.

Recent First Kuwaiti employees agree that the accounts of Owen and Mayberry are accurate. One longtime supervisor claimed that 50 to 60 percent of the laborers regularly protest that First Kuwaiti "treats them like animals," and routinely reduces their promised pay with confusing and unexplained deductions.

Another former First Kuwaiti manager, who declined to be named because of possible adverse consequences, said that Owen's and Mayberry's complaints only begin "to scratch the surface."

But scratching the surface is the only view yet available of what may be the most lasting monument to the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. As of now, only a handful of authorized State Department managers and contractors, along with First Kuwaiti workers and contractors, are officially allowed inside the project's walls. No journalist has ever been allowed access to the sprawling 104-acre site with towering construction cranes raising their necks along the skyline.

What we see in Iraq today is genocide, mass murder and war crimes. Ordinary Iraqis are beige killed left and right by occupation troops, by government militias, by foreign contractors, by terrorist and by ordinary criminals.

No one is safe anymore. This has been going on since the invasion and has gotten worse and worse each month. A lot of Iraqis saw the turmoil as a result of an occupation people wanted to end, so they said it peacefully thru voting, thru demonstrations, some thru armed struggle and others also thru pure simple debate. No one listened to them/us, instead Bush said NO TIMETABLE FOR WITHDRAWAL.

He even argued that if he gave a timetable it would mean the terrorists would have won. Strange that he does not see it as democracy would have won since the majority of Iraqis wanted a timetable. Following their wishes of the majority is what democracy is all about, how does he not see that as a good reason to give a timetable?

So he and his Iraqi puppets thought the hell with Iraqis. And rest assured, hell is what Iraqis got.

Now the US has the nerve to give Maliki a TIMETABLE TO CURVE VIOLENCE. Strange isn’t it? So what does Mr.Maliki think about that? "We do not believe in a timetable and no one will impose one on us," is his comment. So he too thinks the hell with Iraqis.

And rest assured, that is exactly what Iraqis have been experiencing the last years and he wants them to continue to live in hell.Bush and his team and the Iraqi government (yes all of them) care NOTHING about the ordinary Iraqis that are being killed every single minute of the day.

Reckless leaders such as these have no credibility what so ever when it comes to caring about ordinary Iraqis. So what can I make of this? Honestly the only thing that makes real sense is that they want Iraq destroyed. Some might argue Iraq is already destroyed – well that’s true but apparently not enough for that group.

Some might argue it does not make sense why would they jeopardise (especially Bush) their careers like that? I don’t know the exact answer to that. The truth is, however, surely hidden in some unholy combination of the factors Greed, Hate, Oil, apartheid-Israel, Racism, and the accelerated return of Christ.

The place was empty when U.S. soldiers burst in, raiding a house in Baghdad's violent Washash neighborhood in the hopes of finding killers involved in sectarian murders.

By the look of things, no one had been there for some time, even though neighbors in the area reported seeing people dragged inside in recent weeks. But apparently someone involved in the area's sectarian violence had been there recently: left behind was a leather-bound day planner that gave a disturbing picture of the systematic nature of Baghdad's bloodshed.

Though the book was largely blank, inside were several sheets of loose paper covered in Arabic writing. Back at Camp Taji, a massive U.S. Army base north of Baghdad, translators sifted through the papers and found evidence backing up what some U.S.troops who patrol Washash have come to suspect — that Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army are conducting what amounts to an ethnic cleansing campaign in Washash, a predominantly Shi'ite area with pockets of Sunni residents.

Sadr's militia, the document suggests, are systematically driving Sunni families from their homes around Washash, which some U.S. troops who patrol there have taken to calling Little Sadr City.

Among the papers found in the raid is a list of 65 houses around Washash where Shi'ite families have replaced Sunni families. On other pages were drafts of threat letters clearly intended for delivery to Sunni homes. And there was a roster of "virtuous families" in the Washash area with house numbers written next to their names, so the militia relocation agents could keep track of people deemed fit to stay.

"They're very well organized," said Capt. Johnny Sutton, whose troops head up U.S. patrols in Washash.

U.S. forces moved into Washash and surrounding neighborhoods about three weeks ago, as rising sectarian violence left bodies surfacing on the streets almost daily. Initially the mounting death toll looked simply like the results of a spasm of violence in the neighborhood. But as soldiers began piecing together bits of information they uncovered about the killings, a pattern emerged.

Some Sunni families around Washash have been getting threat letters from militant Sadr operatives, who typically set a deadline for them to clear out of their homes. There's a DVD version as well, with demands for a family to move out accompanied by images of houses exploding.

Often that's enough to scare a family into moving. Sometimes the Mahdi operatives go further, however. U.S. soldiers I joined on patrols in Washash say Shi'ite militiamen will sometimes abduct and murder the main male figure in a Sunni household, leaving his family unable to afford their home or too terrified to stay. It appears these targeted Sunnis make up much of the body count on the streets in Washash.

How many Sunni families have been driven out is impossible to say. But it's safe to assume that the list U.S. soldiers found represents only a fraction of the Shi'ite families who've been moved into Washash from elsewhere in Baghdad by Sadr's militia. Sutton says his troops, who work closely with Iraqi security forces, plan to contact the Shi'ite families listed in the Madhi Army housing log for Washash to see what they know.

"Some of these people may be unwitting," said Sutton. "They may not have realized what had happened and how they ended up there. Some of them may have."

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki continued his open dispute with American officials Thursday, blaming the United States-led coalition for Iraq's chaos and faulting its military strategy.

His sharp comments, in an interview with Reuters, came as the White House and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld sought to play down the idea of a growing rift between the United States and the Iraq government.

Rumsfeld urged critics of administration policy "to just back off" and "relax."

According to a partial transcript of the interview distributed by Reuters, al-Maliki said he thought that Iraqi troops, left to their own devices, could re-establish order in Iraq in six months, not the 12 to 18 months that top U.S. commander Gen. William Casey had predicted Tuesday.

Al-Maliki offered a different set of priorities for fighting violence than U.S. officials, who've said the greatest threat to Iraq comes from death squads aligned with Shiite Muslim militias. In recounting a meeting with the head of one of those militias, cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, al-Maliki said he and al-Sadr agreed "that the efforts for all political groups should be focused on the most dangerous challenge, which is al-Qaida and the Saddam Baathists." Both those groups are made up primarily of Sunni Muslims.

Al-Maliki also said U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad was "not accurate" when he said Tuesday that the Iraqi government had agreed to a timetable for dealing with Iraq's problems.

The interview came as Bush administration officials in Washington continued to try to explain their position on setting "benchmarks" for Iraqi government actions. With just days to go before the midterm congressional election, Democrats and some Republicans have suggested that the U.S. begin withdrawing troops if the Iraqi government doesn't meet goals on time.

Rumsfeld said Thursday that there'd be no set dates for Iraqi leaders to meet nor any penalties imposed if they failed to meet goals.

He also said U.S. officials planned to increase spending on Iraq's army and police, but didn't say how much. The $70 billion in war spending that lawmakers tacked on to the 2007 defense-spending bill includes $1.7 billion to train and equip Iraq's security forces.

In Iraq, U.S. and Iraqi forces set up roadblocks Thursday and launched round-the-clock aerial surveillance of Baghdad as their search for an American soldier who may have been kidnapped entered its third day.

"We're using all assets in our arsenal to find this American soldier, and the government of Iraq is doing everything that it can also at every level," said Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, the top U.S. military spokesman in Iraq. "Make no mistake: We will not stop looking for our service member."

The search was so intense, Caldwell said, that military officials think it may have contributed to a sudden drop in the level of violence in the city, which had reached record highs in recent weeks. Caldwell said the violence had declined the last two days, though he cautioned that the reduction also might be the result of the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

He declined to provide details of the search for the soldier, who's been described as an American of Iraqi descent. Family members told U.S. officials that the soldier, who was a translator, came to visit them in central Baghdad. Shortly after he arrived, three carloads of masked gunman stormed the house and took him away in handcuffs, family members said.

Baghdad residents reported that parts of Sadr City, a slum stronghold of Shiite militias and death squads, were blockaded. For much of the day every entrance but one also was blocked into the central district, where the missing soldiers' family lived.

Violence continued elsewhere. The U.S. military announced Thursday that four Marines and a sailor had been killed in combat Wednesday, raising to 96 the number of American deaths in Iraq so far in October. All but four were killed in action, making the month's combat toll the worst for U.S. troops in two years.

McClatchy correspondent Drew Brown contributed to this story from Washington.

Dozens of Iraqis are killed every day. Bodies are dumped on streets, disfigured by torture. A climate of fear reigns. But worse may yet be to come.

U.S.-backed plans to create autonomous regions with varying access to Iraq's oil wealth risk sparking greater conflict between rival factions in the Shi'ite majority that could turn already anarchic violence into the messiest of wars, analysts and sources within various Shi'ite political groups say.

Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, acknowledging the scale of the threat, said on Thursday he would abort the "federalism" project altogether if it prompted such violence.

Fighting in the southern Shi'ite town of Amara last week that killed at least two dozen people was just the latest sign of mounting friction within the United Alliance bloc, which has a near-majority in parliament.

The divisions are rooted in dynastic struggles among Shi'ite Muslim clerics who, as in neighbouring Iran, dominate Iraqi politics.

"The conflict in the regions will be Shi'ite versus Shi'ite and Sunni versus Sunni," Maliki told Reuters in an interview. "If we have federalism and people fought each other in the regions then we will not do it".

Plans for provincial elections next year -- ahead of the possible formation of new federal regions in 2008 -- will bring those power struggles to a head, several officials said.

Until now, much concern has focused on hostility to the plan from Saddam Hussein's once dominant Sunni minority, which fears it will hand Iraq's vast southern oilfields to Shi'ites and Iran and give the northern reserves to the Kurds.

Parliament passed a law allowing for regions to be formed from 2008 last month, despite Sunni opposition.

Though some Shi'ite factions, notably that of radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, have echoed Sunni doubts, sources in all main groups said they wanted to see new regions emerge and all factions were now preparing to struggle for control of them.

"The federalism law is a recipe for fighting and more fighting," said political scientist Hazem al-Naimi of Baghdad's Mustansiriya University. "It will create in-fighting among Shi'ites. Every faction will want to control a region."

OIL AND SHRINES

Among other key groups are the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), led by Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, who has proposed joining nine of Iraq's 18 provinces into a Shi'ite super-region covering the south.

Like Sadr, he represents a clerical dynasty in the holy city of Najaf, "capital" of Shi'ite Islam, where a handful of spiritual leaders have historically jockeyed for influence.

"Not only the political groups but also the religious leadership ... will fight now to get some power," Naimi said, highlighting struggles for control of the oilfields of Basra and the clerical institutions of Najaf.

Sadr, a young populist with a mass following that includes thousands of Mehdi Army militiamen, may have an edge over SCIRI and its Badr armed wing if the power struggle comes to street fights of the kind seen in Najaf a year ago, Naimi said.

In Basra, Najaf and elsewhere, Shi'ite militias partly form government security forces, further complicating the picture.

"I can't say there will be no fighting. In some areas it might turn ugly," an official in the Alliance said.

"The leaders of all the factions will try to avoid a battle but in Iraq nothing can be calculated with any accuracy and some rogue element in any party could start it.

"We're talking about taking control, governing the Shi'ites of Iraq," he said. "That's no small thing to fight for, is it?"

The ranking clerical figure in Najaf, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, helped bring Shi'ite factions together in the United Alliance in last year's elections. But his age and health could mean a succession struggle before too long.

There is precedent for violence in such disputes. A senior cleric who had just returned from exile was killed in Najaf days after the 2003 U.S. invasion. Sadr denied a charge of murder.

Feelings run deep between the Sadr group and Hakim's family, much of it dating from the time under Saddam when the Hakims found refuge in non-Arab Iran and Sadr's late father stayed in Najaf, stressing demands for Arab leadership of Shi'ite Islam.

"There is no doubt the Mehdi Army sees Badr as a competitor and some of them consider people loyal to Hakim as not their friends," a political source in Hakim's SCIRI said guardedly.

"After the fall of the regime the differences began to surface. They tried to control it and they are still doing so."

Much to the dismay of the Bush administration, Americans can remember all on their own, without any help from Democrats, that in the run up to the war in Iraq, it was top White House officials who were making the claim that Saddam was in cahoots with bin Laden and secretly involved to 9/11.

The fact that the administration's disinformation campaign was overwhelmingly successful was evidenced by an October 2004, Harris Poll, taken three weeks before the last presidential election, that found 62% of all voters, and 84% of those planning to vote for Bush, still believed that Saddam had "strong links" to Al Qaeda, and that 41% of all voters, and 52% of Bush backers, believed that Saddam had "helped plan and support the hijackers" who had attacked the country on 9/11.

As we now know, the basis for these allegations was false, but the saddest part of the sordid tale is that many Americans are just now beginning to realize that Bush knew the stories were false for more than a year when he cited them as justification for taking the country to war.

Documents since declassified and made public show that the administration was warned by the Defense Intelligence Agency in February 2002, that the tale about a trip to Prague by the leader of the 9/11 highjackers, Mohamed Atta, had come from an unreliable drunk, and that the story about Iraqis training members of al Qaeda on the use of chemical and biological weapons was deliberately fabricated by an Iraqi defector.

The debate over who was most responsible for convincing the nation that there was a link between Saddam and 9/11 will probably continue for years but an important piece of the puzzle can be found by zeroing in on a woman by the name of Laurie Mylroie, a person most people have never heard of.

Mylroie had been pushing for an all-out war against Iraq for a decade and in the run-up to the first Gulf war, she, along with the since fired New York Times reporter, Judith Miller, wrote a book titled, "Saddam Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf."

Mylroie was enmeshed in the Iraq war obsession which originated at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think-tank that served as a home base for the many neocons rendered powerless during the Clinton years, such as Richard Perle, who became chairman of the Defense Policy Board under Bush, and Paul Wolfowitz, who moved into the number-2 position at the Pentagon when Bush took office, along with Newt Gingrich and John Bolton, to name a few others.

In the year 2000, at a time when Dick Cheney sat on AEI's board, the group's publishing arm published a book written by Mylroie, with the help of many neocons, titled, "A Study in Revenge: Saddam Hussein's Unfinished War Against America."

In the author's acknowledgement section of the book, Mylroie thanked a familiar cast of characters for their assistance and included John Bolton and the entire staff of AEI. She also noted a special thanks to Scooter Libby for his "generous and timely assistance."

In addition, Mylroie said of Paul Wolfowitz: "At critical times, he provided crucial support for a project that is inherently difficult." She said that Wolfowitz's wife (at the time), had "fundamentally shaped the book."

Top neocon-hawk, Richard Perle, described the book as "splendid and wholly convincing."

If Mylroie is to be believed, Saddam was involved in every anti-American attack that took place since the early 1990s all over the globe, from the bombings of US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, which she states may have been "the work of both bin Laden and Iraq," to the federal building in Oklahoma City.

She accuses Saddam of being involved in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center even though the FBI, the Joint Terrorism Task Force in New York, the US Attorney's office in the Southern District of New York, the CIA, the National Security Council, and the State Department, have all determined that there was no evidence of the Iraq's involvement in the WTC attack.

Mylroie also claims that the TWA flight 800 which crashed into Long Island Sound was an Iraqi plot even after a lengthily investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board determined that it was an accident.

She maintains that in 2000, Saddam provided the expertise for the bombing of the USS Cole, and was responsible for the deaths of 17 sailors, even though no law enforcement agency has ever made such a claim and even blames Saddam for the anthrax sent through the mail shortly after 9/11.

Once Bush became president, the neocons were brought back into power as either members of the administration or members of the Defense Policy Board, and a war against Iraq became the administration's obsession, with Mylroie and the hawks working hand and hand to promote the theory that the war was necessary because of Saddam's involvement in every terrorist act against the US over the past decade.

When the neocon's wish for another "Pearl Habor like attack" came true on 9/11, the race towards Iraq was on and the propaganda machine picked up speed. As a first step, they had Harper Collins reissue Mylroie's book under the new title, "The War Against America." The foreword for the second edition was written by DPB member James Woolsey, who described Mylroie's work as "brilliant and brave."

The book's cover displayed an endorsement from Paul Wolfowitz which stated: "Provocative and disturbing ... argues powerfully that the shadowy mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing ... was in fact an agent of Iraqi intelligence."

In the second book's acknowledgments, Mylroie thanked Wolfowitz for being "kind enough to listen to this work presented orally and later to read the manuscript. At critical times, he provided crucial support for a project that is inherently difficult." She also praised John Bolton for his assistance.

Now, a nutcase like Mylroie, if left to her own devices, would probably have been harmless. But when the neocons made her a consultant to the Bush Pentagon, the job added misplaced credibility to her hair-brained Saddam-bin Laden conspiracy theories.

There is no doubt that she was hired to convince the world that Saddam played a role in 9/11 and although I don't know how much she was paid, its pretty obvious that the Bush gang got a lot of bang for the buck.

The month before the war began, in February 2003, Mylroie was featured for an interview on Canadian television where she discussed why Bush was going to war against Iraq and at the same time, emphasized the certainty of a Saddam-9/11 link. Shortly after the interview got underway, she stated:

"Listen, we're going to war because President Bush believes Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11. Al Qaeda is a front for Iraqi intelligence.[the U.S.] bureaucracy made a tremendous blunder that refused to acknowledge these links . the people responsible for gathering this information, say in the C.I.A., are also the same people who contributed to the blunder on 9/11 and the deaths of 3,000 Americans, and so whenever this information emerges they move to discredit it."

Contrary to what the Bush team says today, according to Mylroie back then, it doesn't sound like the CIA was claiming that there was a link between Saddam and bin Laden. It sounds like the CIA was saying the opposite and that Mylroie was blaming the CIA for the 9/11 attacks because the agency had not agreed with the neocon's assessment of Saddam's threat to the US and pushed for a war in Iraq sooner.

The next month, on March 12, 2003, Mylroie wrote an article for the New York Sun titled, "Blind to Saddam's 9-11 Role," and told readers that Bush believed Saddam was in on 9/11, and claimed that was why he was taking the country to war against Iraq:

"Iraq, along with Al Qaeda, was most probably involved in the September 11 attacks, and President Bush understands that. Already on September 17, six days later, Mr. Bush affirmed, "I believe Iraq was involved, but I'm not going to strike them now," as Bob Woodward's "Bush at War" discloses."

"Indeed, at Thursday's press conference, Mr. Bush said that Iraq has financed and trained Al Qaeda and similar terrorist groups," Mylroie added. "That is why Mr. Bush is willing to take the risk entailed in war against Iraq," she said.

At one point, Mylroie attempted to convince the 9/11 Commission that, "there is substantial reason to believe that these masterminds [of both the '93 and 9/11 Trade Center attacks] are Iraqi intelligence agents."

However, her testimony was apparently not persuasive, because in regard to the 9/11 attacks, the Commission's final report states that the "Intelligence Community has no credible information that Baghdad had foreknowledge of the 11 September attacks or any other al-Qaida strike."

Some of Mylroie's more recent endeavors included writing a book titled, "Bush vs. the Beltway: How the CIA and the State Department tried to Stop the War on Terror." This title is somewhat baffling in light of the speeches by Bush himself stating that everyone was in agreement with his assessment of the need to go to war, and that it was the evidence produced by the intelligence agencies, and not his White House, that led to the war against Iraq.

According to its title, this book claims that the CIA tried to "Stop" the war, and to be sure, Mylroie would not have chosen this title had it not won the approval of the Bush propaganda machine.

The fact is that in the run up to war, Mylroie wore a variety of hats. But her most important job by far came when she testified as an expert witness in a lawsuit filed against a group of defendants that included Saddam, bin Laden, the Taliban, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, al-Qaeda, and the Republic of Iraq.

The suit was filed by families on behalf of the estates of two 9/11 victims, George Eric Smith and Timothy Soulas.

The lawsuit represents the one and only time that the truth or falsity of the Saddam-9/11 connection has been put to the test. In the end, the Judge in the case delivered a verdict in favor of the families based on specific claims by Mylroie and other top Bush administration officials, that a definite link between Saddam and 9/11 did in fact exist.

US District Court Judge, Harold Baer, entered a default judgment for the plaintiffs in January 2003, because the time allowed for a response by the defendants had passed, and they had failed to file an answer to the plaintiffs' complaint.

In March 2003, Judge Baer held two days of hearings to determine the amount of damages that should be awarded and the lawyers for the plaintiffs presented evidence that they claimed established a "conclusive link" between Saddam and 9/11, and included declassified interviews with Iraqi defectors who appeared on a television news show and said that Saddam used a jet airplane in a remote area of Iraq to train the 9/11 hijackers.

However, by far, the most convincing evidence came from under oath testimony by former CIA Director, R James Woolsey, a member of the Bush administration's Defense Policy Board at the time, along with the statements made by Colin Powell and George Tenet.

On May 8, 2003, Judge Baer released his written findings in the case and awarded damages to the plaintiffs in the amount of $104 million, to be paid by Saddam, bin Laden, al-Qaida, the Taliban, and the former Iraqi government.

In his decision, Judge Baer explained that he had based his findings on the statements of Woolsey, Powell, Tenet, and Mylroie, all of whom he considered experts on the Saddam-9/11 connection, he said: "The opinion testimony of the plaintiffs' experts is sufficient to meet plaintiffs' burden that Iraq collaborated in or supported bin Laden/al Qaeda's terrorist acts of September 11. . ." he wrote.

"Their opinions, coupled with their qualifications as experts on this issue," Judge Baer wrote, "provide a sufficient basis for a reasonable jury to draw inferences which could lead to the conclusion that Iraq provided material support to al Qaeda and that it did so with knowledge and intent to further al Qaeda's criminal acts."

The judge cited a few specific statements that had been made by Tenet and Powell, that he had relied upon in formulating a believe that there was a link between Saddam and 9/11:

"Both Director Tenet and Secretary Powell mentioned 'senior level contacts' between Iraq and al Qaeda going back to the early 1990s [although both acknowledged that part of the interactions in the early to mid-1990s pertained to achieving a mutual non-aggression understanding];" Baer noted, "both mentioned that al Qaeda sought to acquire poison gas and training in its use from Iraq; both mentioned that al Qaeda members have been in Iraq, including Baghdad, after September 2001. . . ."

"Director Tenet's carefully worded letter included in substance the same allegations," the judge wrote, "but with less detail, than Secretary of State Colin Powell made before the U.N. Security Counsel on Feb. 5, 2003, in his remarks about 'the potentially much more sinister nexus between Iraq and the al-Qaida terrorist network. . . .' "

He also outlined the testimony he relied upon provided by Woolsey. "[Former CIA] Director [James] Woolsey," the Judge wrote, "reviewed several facts that tended in his view to show Iraq's involvement in acts of terrorism against the United States in general and likely in the events of September 11 specifically."

The Judge discussed specific portions of Woolsey's testimony that led to his ruling against the defendants, and stated in part: "First, Director Woolsey described the existence of a highly secure military facility in Iraq where non-Iraqi fundamentalists [e.g., Egyptians and Saudis] are trained in airplane hijacking and other forms of terrorism."

"Through satellite imagery and the testimony of three Iraqi defectors, [he] demonstrated the existence of this facility, called Salman Pak, which has an airplane but no runway," the decision noted. "The defectors also stated that these fundamentalists were taught methods of hijacking using utensils or short knives," Judge Baer wrote.

"Second," he continued, "Director Woolsey mentioned a meeting that allegedly occurred in Prague in April 2001 between Mohammad Atta, the apparent leader of the hijackings, and a high-level Iraqi intelligence agent."

"According to James Woolsey," the Judge wrote, "the evidence indicates that this was an 'operational meeting' because Atta flew to the Czech Republic and then returned to the United States shortly afterwards."

"Third," Judge Baer explained, "Woolsey noted that his conclusion was also based on 'contacts,' which refer to interactions between Hussein/Iraq and bin Laden/al Qaeda that are described in a letter from George Tenet, the Director of Central Intelligence, to Senator Bob Graham on October 7, 2002."

In his findings, the judge next focused on the testimony of Mylroie, and it is apparent that he believed her claims that Saddam was involved in all of the terrorist attacks against the US dating back to the early 1990s.

"Dr. Mylroie described Iraq's covert involvement in acts of terrorism against the United States in the past, including the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993," Baer stated in his opinion.

"Dr. Mylroie testified to at least four events that served as the basis for her conclusion that Iraq played a role in the September 11 tragedy," he wrote.

"First," he said, "she claimed that Iraq provided and continues to provide support to two of the main perpetrators of the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993."

"Second," he wrote, "she noted bin Laden's fatwah against the United States, which was motivated by the presence of U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia to fight the Gulf War against Iraq."

"Third," the judge stated, "she noted that threats by bin Laden in late 1997 and early 1998 which led up to the bombing of the U.S. embassies [on August 7, 1998] were 'in lockstep' with Hussein's threats about ousting the U.N. weapons inspectors, which he eventually did on August 5, 1998."

Judge Baer also quoted other portions of her testimony and said, "Dr. Mylroie concluded that 'Iraq, I believe, did provide support and resources for the September 11 attacks. I agree with [Iraqi defector] Captain [Sabah] Khodada when he said that ... it took a state like Iraq to carry out an attack as really sophisticated, massive and deadly as what happened on September 11'."

After hearing the assertions of these top administration officials, Judge Baer concluded that: "Plaintiffs have shown, albeit barely, 'by evidence satisfactory to the court' that Iraq provided material support to bin Laden and al Qaeda."

The judge's decision is proof of the fact that the White House is home to the guilty parties who deliberately misled Americans about a bogus link between Saddam and 9/11, months before the war began. His written findings document the fraud perpetrated on the country by top Bush administration officials.

For those Americans still wondering about a motive for Bush taking the country to war in Iraq, the first and foremost goal of the neocons was to gain control of the world's oil supply and the number two goal, was to set up a war profiteering scheme to funnel billions of tax dollars into their own bank accounts for many years to come.

Its really that simple.

My advice to any disbeliever, is to go on the internet and do a google search on Iraq and war profiteering and find out who in the administration and the Bush family stood to benefit the most off a war in Iraq and read the names of those who have benefited the most so far.

A quick 15-minute search will prove that the roots of the scheme were planted firmly in the back yard of the White House and the fruits have not fallen far from the tree.

Radical Iraqi cleric Moqtada Al Sadr has threatened rogue commanders in his Mahdi Army militia with the wrath of God, his principle mouthpiece told worshippers at prayer Friday.

The Mahdi Army is one of the most powerful armed Shiite groups in Iraq and has been implicated in a number of recent battles with police, despite orders from Sadr to his followers not to spill Iraqi blood without permission.

"This disobedience to the leadership has divided us and earned us multiple enemies," declared Sheikh Jaber al-Khafaji, the preacher who speaks for Sadr at the mosque in the central Iraqi town of Kufa.

"The directives of Muqtada Al Sadr in his speach during Eid prayers should not go unnoticed," he added, referring to the latest of Sadr’s recent attempts to rein in his movement’s more undisciplined cadres.

"If you do not obey, you will regret it. Indeed, I declare that you will be cursed. Sayid Muqtada Al Sadr is a blessing from God upon you and is your protector," Khafaji told the large crowd in this Shiite area.

In recent weeks armed groups claiming allegiance to Sadr’s movement have fought pitched battles with Iraqi security forces in two southern towns, Diwaniyah and Amara, despite calls from Sadr for restraint.

The anti-American cleric met with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki after the fighting broke out, and both have spoken on the need to find a political solution to the violence wracking Iraq.

Palestinians living in Iraq have increasingly come under threat since the US-led occupation of the country began in 2003, according to a recent report by the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR.

The report said that Palestinians, who are predominantly Sunni Muslims, have become targets of Shi’ite death squads because of resentment towards them for their perceived support of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein’s government, which was also Sunni and which sympathised with their cause. This targeting has forced thousands of Palestinians to flee their homes, UNHCR says.

In the popular Palestinian neighbourhood of al-Baladiya in the capital, Baghdad, the Palestinian population has dropped from 8,000 before 2003 to fewer than 4,000 now. IRIN spoke to two Palestinian residents there.

Ahmed Salim (42)

"Iraqis want us to leave their country. Militias started to target us and force us out from our houses accusing us of being Saddam’s followers. Sometimes I work as a vegetable seller to get some money since I lost my job and my family needs to eat.

"I am desperate and do not have a choice and don’t know where to go. We urge the government to look after us. We are Muslims, Arabs and not animals to be left to be killed like that.

"They [militias] killed my father, brother, sister and two nephews because they refused to leave their home and I am sure that soon they will come after me. What will I do having four children to look after, without a job and without money? God bless us, the landless Palestinians."

Umm Muhammad (56)

"They [militias] are monsters, they killed my two sons in front of my house and later shouted saying that we Palestinians are like pigs [because] we rely on what people can give us. This is not human; they [her sons] were the only good thing I had in my life and now they have gone leaving behind their seven children to their unemployed widows to look after.

"I saw the head of my son being blown apart with bullets and in the eyes of those cowards I could see just happiness and excitement from doing that. Justice should be done and we have to be protected.

"We are human and every human being has the right to live. We have been warned to leave our house in a week but I think it will be my last day in life because I will only leave this house in a coffin."

There are three things wrong with the current policy in Iraq.Occupation, occupation and occupation.

Foreign occupation is the reason why over 90% of Iraqis want the Americans to leave their country. It is the reason why nearly 50% of Iraqis believe that it is justifiable to shoot American troops and why nearly 70% of attacks are on occupation forces. Representative John Murtha was correct when he said, "We are inciting the problem;" our presence is a lightening rod for violence.

Bush’s promise to establish security in Baghdad is foolish and doomed to failure. Security cannot be achieved under occupation because the foreign troops are perceived as the enemy. This is not hard to grasp. We need only to imagine how we would react if Iraqi soldiers were maintaining checkpoints or arresting our people on the streets of America.

There’s no point in recriminations. There will be plenty of time to examine what went wrong after American forces are withdrawn from the theater. But certainly there have been events which galvanized Iraqis against the occupation; the destruction of Falluja and the abuses at Abu Ghraib are perhaps on top on the list.

More important, we must recognize where we are now in a conflict that is progressively intensifying and will not let up until the occupation ends.

The security plan for Baghdad is short-sighted and will not succeed. We already know that many of the Iraqis feel threatened by foreign troops on their streets and that a considerable number of the resistance fighters live in Baghdad. They are Baghdadis, this is their home. They are not leaving.

Will we destroy the city to liberate it? How many doors will be kicked in? How many buildings will be reduced to rubble? How many innocent people will be dragged off to interrogation-centers and filthy prisons? How many tens of thousands of people will be killed?

This is not liberation; it is "pacification".

Liberation is not living in fear for one’s life every minute of the day. Martial law is not democracy.

There is no "government" under occupation, just foreign-military rule. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has no power and he governs nothing beyond the walls of America’s the Green Zone.

The Bush administration has begun to criticize al-Maliki for not stopping the sectarian violence, but no one is paying attention. Al Maliki follows in the long progression of American stooges; al-Allawi, al-Jaafari, al Maliki; none of them have any bearing on events, nor will they have any part to play in the final outcome. No one is fooled by the actions or pronouncements of Washington’s puppets. It is a public relations scam that has outlived its usefulness.

If we are serious about concluding the war in Iraq, we must deal directly with the leaders of the Iraqi resistance, many of whom were part of the former Ba’athist regime. There are rumors that talks are currently taking place in Amman, Jordan between representatives of the resistance and American officials, but there is no solid confirmation of this.

Negotiations between the warring parties will not succeed under the guidance of Donald Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld has shown repeatedly that he is incapable of understanding strategic or political objectives. Even now, he insists that we should stay the course and persist on the same disastrous path. The administration’s newly-adopted language; "timetable for benchmarks" is meaningless. It offers no quantifiable difference from the present policy.

We cannot expect to succeed by merely intensifying the violence while eliminating media coverage. Iraq is not the Gaza Strip. It is not possible to surround the entire country in concertina-wire and fire rockets at anyone who looks suspicious. This is not a serious approach.

Western elites are increasingly worried about the long-term effects that the Iraq war will have on America’s global-primacy. The US has sacrificed of its "soft power" and moral authority in an adventure that has produced no positive results.

The army is gravely overextended and morale has begun to plummet. Soldiers’ are tired of tour after tour with no end in sight and nothing to show for the risks they take every day.

Force-readiness has also begun to erode as vital military equipment is being devoured by harsh desert conditions. In a recent article by Andrew Bacevich, "On the Offense" the author says:

"The once crack Third Infantry Division, preparing for its third Iraq tour, has two of its four brigades without tanks or other heavy equipment. The Army’s chief of staff complains that army depots are clogged with 600 battle-damaged and worn-out Abrams tanks and 1,000 Bradley Fighting Vehicles awaiting repair. The army lacks the money to fix them—this despite the fact that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have now cost an estimated $500 billion".

The army is steadily wearing down while Rumsfeld clings to the vain hope that he will snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. This unrealistic dream of victory is a phantom that is perpetuating the violence and putting Americans at risk.

As defense expert Harlan Ullman (the author of "shock and awe") noted in the Washington Times, "our policies are failing or foundering and, unless we take new directions, events in East Asia could follow the disastrous trajectory of what is happening in the greater Middle East."

This is what really concerns western elites who, up until a few months ago, fully supported the Bush agenda. The attention devoted to Iraq is loosening America’s grip on the rest of the empire, and our influence around the world is in sharp decline. As we become further mired in an unwinnable war; there is growing sense that we may have already turned the corner and are headed for an impending tragedy.

The criticism of the Bush’s Iraq policy is now coming from all sides of the "reality-based" community. Yesterday, Senator Lindsey Graham’s blasted away saying, "We’re on the verge of chaos, and the current plan is not working." Just hours earlier, former Intelligence official Wayne White who said, "We are not winning. It’s getting worse…The effort cannot be sustained over the long-haul."

As the criticism continues to mount, the administration gets more embattled and mistrustful. Bush equates pigheadedness with steely-resolve, and remains impervious to reason. He is still in the clutches of his key advisors, Cheney and Rumsfeld who refuse to entertain the notion of early withdrawal. They have already indicated that the recommendations of the James Baker "Iraq Survey Group" will be ignored. There stubbornness paves the way for an even greater tragedy in the very near future.

What happens when the war is lost but the fighting continues?

We are about to find out.

There are now 650,000 reasons for withdrawing from Iraq and for allowing events to take their course. Iraq’s militias are presently locked in mortal combat to determine the ultimate political make-up of the future Iraq. We should stand down and let that process unfold. The belief that we need to supervise the transition is just more paternalistic claptrap intended to support the ongoing occupation. The Iraqis want us out of their affairs and out of their country.

We’ve turned Iraq into a charnel house; unleashing the full-force of the world’s most powerful military on a small country that never posed a threat to our national security. Enough is enough. It’s time to end the occupation and bring the troops home.

Before you read this, I will tell you what happened Monday to my uncle:

He was going to his work in the morning with his friend and a driver (he works for one of the ministries, I can’t say which one).

Four cars blocked their car, and 16 gunmen stepped out asking my uncle and his friends to come with them, so the gun men started to kick him force him to rid with them but he kept resisting tell them if you want to kill me then do it here, at least my body can be found and identified.

Then came two police cars, to his surprise the police were shaking hands with the gunmen asking them to hurry up because roads are getting very crowded with people going to their works.

With my uncle keep reinstating to go with them and totally covered with blood they left him and his friends, saying there will be a next time.

If you want to understand what’s behind the story then, Islammemo obtained this document and I translated it to check by yourself how bad it is.

————Start Reading————

To / Gen Ghassan Albaoui-police chief of Diyala
Brigadier Mudhafar and Brigadier General Karim Qassem,

Under the slogan of [the Shiites are the Winners]

In a few days a battalion of [200] fighters from the "Mahdi army" loyal to the Shiites religious authorities, will enter the province of Diyala, to clean it from the Sunni terrorists, especially from these regions [Names of districts in Baquba – Diyala province].

We have prepared a plan and it is ready for the full implementation, our sources collected valuable information from the areas mentioned above, we ask your cooperation with us as much as possible with thanks and appreciation.

Explain the steps below you plan to get rid of the Sunnis:

Our force will come in cars and Humvee’st of the Iraqi Army, ambulances and police vehicles, wearing Iraqi army and police uniforms.

- We will block the mentioned areas to arrest the terrorists and destroy their homes and rape their wives, as Muqtada al-Sadr said in one of his valuable speeches [kill them wherever you find them].

- The duration of the operation is three days after that we will take the detainees into the Army intelligence and integrate them to lose attention from regular citizens and then in the night we will take them to Baghdad "to do the rest".

Thank you
Abu Hussein al-Tamimi
Commander of the Al-Mahdi Army

The leader of Iraq’s largest Shiite bloc called yesterday for the country to be divided into federal zones, to the dismay of minority Sunnis who fear losing out on Iraq’s vast oil wealth.

Abdel Aziz Al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), told hundreds of supporters that a federal system with only loose central control would prevent the return of dictatorship.

"Federalism will guarantee that the injustice of the past will not revisit our children nor our grandchildren," Hakim said in a speech for the Eid Al-Fitr holidays marking the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Hakim and his supporters argue that in order to prevent a resurgence of Sunni dominance of Iraq, such as that which prevailed under Saddam Hussein’s ousted regime, the Shiites of south and central Iraq must have self-rule.

He accused opponents of federalism of wanting "to bring back dictatorship and unjust central power," while insisting that SCIRI did not want to destroy or partition Iraq but to strengthen it. Hakim’s Sunni opponents and many Shiites, including radical leader Moqtada Al-Sadr, fear SCIRI’s vision of an eight- province autonomous Shiite zone would put the Iranian-backed party in command of Iraq’s oil wealth.

Iraq’s northern Kurdish region is also oil-rich, and while Kurdish leaders there have stopped calling for complete independence they are attached to the degree of autonomy they have enjoyed since the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War. Iraq’s post-Saddam constitution, passed by referendum in October 2005, describes the country as a "democratic, federal, representative republic" but a decision on what kind of federal system to use has yet to be taken.

Earlier this month Iraq’s Parliament adopted a law to institutionalize federalism within 18 months at the earliest to give time to amend the constitution to ease Sunni concerns about the distribution of national wealth.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov meanwhile warned that Iraq would break up if nothing were done to unify the country. "If there is no breakthrough and real unity does not begin, this situation (break-up) will become reality," Lavrov was quoted as saying by the Itar-Tass news agency yesterday.

British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett on Monday said it was a decision for Iraqis themselves about whether they wanted to continue as a single state or divide along ethnic lines. She said that while unity was the most important short-term objective, in the long run Iraqis had had enough of arbitrary borders being imposed on them from outside, in apparent reference to the country’s colonial past.

In Najaf, Moqtada Al-Sadr yesterday called for an end to the sectarian violence ravaging the country’s Shiite and Sunni communities, on the occasion of Eid Al-Fitr. "I totally reject any Shiite-Shiite or Shiite-Sunni killings, whatever their motive," the influential leader told his followers in an address marking the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. "My only enemy is the occupier and the Nawasib," he said, referring to Sunni extremists responsible for reprisal killings against Shiites. "Aggression against any Iraqi is an aggression against me."

Earlier this month, Sadr issued a statement saying that if rumors about his followers taking part in such killings were true, he would denounce them. He has also called on his militia to "exert their efforts to return the Sunnis and Shiites who have been displaced to their homes."

Meanwhile, gunmen killed two Iraqi policemen in the southern city of Amara yester, a Muslim holiday marred by tensions following clashes between police and Shiite militias, a security source said.

The source, asking not to be named, said Capt. Hussein Salah of the criminal police was gunned down at his home, in an attack that also left two of his brothers wounded. A colleague in the same branch of the police, Ala Ghleim, was killed under similar circumstances, he said.

The Iraqi army declared a curfew in the Shiite city on Monday after two days of violence last week in which at least 24 people were killed and the Mahdi Army militia burned down two police stations. Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki issued a warning to the militias, particularly those in Amara’s Meysan province, "to refrain from any armed action that violates security."

Three more US soldiers have been killed in attacks and fighting with rebels in Iraq, the American military announced yesterday, raising its death toll for the month of October to 89.

Iraqi tribes are getting more and more involved in the sectarian strife that is tearing the country apart.

Both Arab and Kurdish tribes still wield influence in the country and many thought they could play a decisive role in halting the current bloodshed.But the tribes, like other sectors of the society, find themselves drawn into the current sectarian struggle.

Kurdish and Arab tribes in the northern city of Mosul and restive oil-rich city of Kirkuk fight each other and Sunni and Shiite tribes across the country are also involved in the fight.

Affiliation particularly among Arab tribal hierarchy has little to do with sectarian divisions as many major tribes have both Shiite and Sunni members.

But the ferocity of the present strife and its heavy toll in casualties is setting them apart.Mixed tribes are present in several areas in Iraq, particularly in the small towns between Baghdad and Tikrit in the north.

There are reports that the tribes have divided themselves on sectarian grounds and have began fighting each other, using rocket propelled grenades and mortars.

The governor Hamad al-Shakti said he was deeply concerned. “If tribes lose control of their areas and continue fighting, the situation will get completely out of control,” al-Shakti said.

The governor has had several meetings with tribal chieftains in his province for face to face meetings in which they vow not to fight each other.

Recently, he convened the tribes in the volatile region north of Baghdad where Balad, Dhiloiya and Dujail are situation. This mixed region has seen a dramatic rise in violence and sectarian killings most of which is going unreported by both local and international media.

A written document that forbids inter-tribe fighting was signed last week to halt fighting and sectarian killings for 20 days as a prelude for reconciliation.

Only two days later, sectarian killings resumed with at least nine more people killed and 12 injured.“This is a black page in the history of the country,” the governor said when asked about the latest killings.

“I urge all the tribes to put an end to the bloodshed and turn a new page of reconciliation in their relations. Only with reconciliation we can build a bright future for Iraq,” he said.

As a reconciliatory gesture on his part, al-Shakti has promised to handsomely compensate all the families of the dead and those injured in his province in the hope that victims’ families and tribes would no longer ask for revenge.

Um Ahmad, as she was known to the girls, had it all planned out. From Baghdad to the border and on to Damascus and a new life, Mona and her three Iraqi friends didn't need to worry about a thing.

The job in the textiles factory outside the Syrian capital would pay $300 (£160) a month, travel for the long journey was already arranged, a place for the girls to stay was ready and waiting and - best of all - Um Ahmad would pay Mona's father one month's salary in advance.

For the 26-year-old eldest daughter of eight children whose parents faced a daily despair of car bombs and poverty in their Baghdad slum, the offer sounded too good to be true.

It was.

Within a week of arriving in Damascus, Mona - whose name has been changed to protect her identity - had been plied with alcohol by Um Ahmad, required to dance for "friends of the factory owner" and had lost her virginity.

Unable to return to her family due to the perceived shame she had brought upon them, Mona began her new life in Syria as a prostitute working for Um Ahmad, dancing in bars outside Damascus and having sex with clients.

As pressure mounts on President George Bush to announce a significant change of direction to the disastrous military occupation of Iraq, the stories of Mona and others like her are a sobering reminder of the consequences of the other Iraq that war has created: a place away from bombs and beheadings, but where the daily struggle for existence is still desperate, and where young lives continue to be torn apart.

Mona had become another victim of the growing sex trade among an Iraqi refugee community in Syria that local NGOs now estimate at 800,000 people, and to whose plight aid agencies say the international community continues to turn a blind eye.

Laurens Jolles, acting representative for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Damascus, told the Guardian that international donor funds for the agency's Iraq programme have been drastically reduced for 2007, roughly halving an office budget he said was already "totally insufficient to provide tangible results".

UNHCR Damascus had requested an overall 2006 budget of $1.3m but got only $700,000, said Mr Jolles - amounting to less than $1 per Iraqi refugee per year, not including the agency's operating costs and its expenditure on non-Iraqi refugees.

"When Iraqis first came here they brought resources and many were not in need of assistance. Two years on, that situation has changed and many refugees are no longer able to look after themselves," said Mr Jolles.

"The situation in Iraq is getting worse and there is no prospect of return. Without providing sufficient resources to help host governments contain the refugee population there will be a secondary displacement of refugees to Europe. The time to do something is now."

A report published recently by the UNHCR and Unicef, the UN children's fund, concluded that an estimated 450,000 Iraqis in Syria "are facing aggravated difficulties" related to their "ambiguous legal status and unsustainable income".

Privately, officials acknowledge the real number is far higher. The majority of Iraqis live in the suburbs of Damascus in deteriorating conditions without work permits, suffering unemployment.

Before April 2003 the number of Iraqis in Syria was estimated at 100,000. Last week UNHCR chief spokesman Ron Redmond said that each month some 40,000 Iraqis are now arriving in Syria, a country of only 19 million people.

The UNHCR report found that prostitution among young Iraqi women in Syria, some just 12 years old, "may become a more widespread problem since the economic situation of Iraqi families is increasingly deteriorating".

"Organised networks dealing with the sex trade were reported," it said, finding evidence that "girls and women were trafficked by organised networks or family members".

Overall, the UNHCR estimates more than 1.5 million Iraqis are internally displaced in Iraq, including some 800,000 who fled their homes prior to 2003, as well as 754,000 who have fled since. A further 1.6 million Iraqis are refugees residing in neighbouring countries, with the majority in Syria and Jordan.

Despite ever increasing numbers of Iraqis fleeing the deadly violence in their homeland, donations to the UNHCR Iraq programme from the US, EU nations, Japan and Australia have been in freefall since the start of the US-led war.

From a high of $150m in 2003, the UNHCR budget for its Iraq programme fell to $29m for 2006, with just a quarter of that budget allocated to neighbouring countries.

Andrew Harper, coordinator for the Iraq unit at UNHCR in Geneva, said the drastic shortfalls have led to the suspension of priority projects such as work to identify and aid the most vulnerable Iraqi refugees, including single mothers, the sick and the elderly.

"Iraq has seen the largest and most recent displacement of any UNHCR project in the world, yet even as more Iraqis are displaced and as their needs increase the funds to help them are decreasing," said Mr Harper. "This growing humanitarian crisis has simply gone under the radar screen of most donors."

The UNHCR is now calling on donor countries to extend their funding of the Iraq programme to a budget of $25m for 2007. Even if that figure is achieved it will be too little too late to help rebuild the lives of many Iraqis living in Syria.

Mona's life took an unexpected turn when Syrian police broke up Um Ahmad's prostitution racket. Free to work for herself, she found a job in a clothes shop, married her Syrian boyfriend and is now a proud mother. Back in Baghdad her family still have no idea where the money she sent them came from.

But for another 17-year-old from the Shia holy city of Najaf in southern Iraq, an evening's work in an adult bar outside Damascus still brings her shame. But it is the only income her family has.

"No one in my family can shout at me, even though they know what I do, because I am the only one working," said the girl, who has changed her name to Ayman since arriving in Syria in June 2003 and who earns $60 a night dancing and sleeping with wealthy Syrians and Arabs from the Gulf.

"I drink a lot of wine before I have sex with the men. Sometimes I hate myself for doing this job, especially when men ask me to do unusual things to make them happy," said Ayman. "I want to be married to a good husband and to have a family of my own, but the war forced me to come to Syria. I keep thinking I should just run away to start a new life in Europe, or maybe even America."

It is not a good sign when you don't even trust your puppets. US troops invaded the offices of a TV station, on October 24, 2006 which owned by the most trusted Shi`ite ally of the US: the Higher Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (is there something ironic that such a council is the closest ally of the US among the Shi`ite groups?).

Muwwaffaq Rubay`i (who is coming to MESA): who is a most corrupt and most submissive puppet of the occupation tried to intervene: explaining to the US soldiers that "we are friends" of the occupation to no avail. The soldiers said that they were looking for the missing American soldier, and that was that.

US President George W. Bush gave a somber, even grim, assessment of Iraq but left gaps on how he would handle some of the most difficult issues -- including a possible civil war.

At a press conference just 13 days before key US legislative elections, Bush warned Iraqi leaders that "American patience is not unlimited," but would not say what would happen if that patience ran out.

He said that Iraq's fledgling government had accepted a "schedule" for dealing with some of the most volatile issues it faces, but would not say what happens if they don't keep it.

And he promised nervous US voters that US troops won't be "taking sides in a sectarian struggle or standing in the crossfire between rival factions," but would not say what happens if Iraq slips into full-fledged civil war.

"You know I won't answer hypotheticals," he scolded one reporter, who had asked him to reconcile his opposition to withdrawing US troops "before the job is done" and his refusal to leave US troops "in the crossfire."

Bush outlined plans to get Iraqi security forces on their feet, and drew a bright line between setting goals and opposition Democrats' calls for a phased US troops withdrawal from Iraq.

"As a matter of fact, the benchmarks will make it more likely we win. Withdrawing on an artificial timetable means we lose," he said.

"Our job is to prevent full-scale civil war from happening in the first place," said Bush, who pointed to the 12 million Iraqis who voted in national elections and stressed: "They didn't vote for civil war."

"And so we will work to prevent that from happening," said Bush, whose Republicans worry that the unpopular conflict in Iraq may cost them control of the House of Representatives, the Senate, or both.

In a lengthy opening statement, Bush declared that the United States was "pressing Iraqi leaders to take bold measures to save their country. We're making it clear that America's patience is not unlimited."

He returned to that theme in the question-and-answer session, saying that "we'll respect the fact that the Iraq government is sovereign. And they must respect the fact that we've got patience, but not unlimited patience."

Asked what would happen if that patience ran out, Bush branded the question another "hypothetical" and said, "Why don't we work to see that it doesn't run out? That's the whole objective."

"That's what positive people do. They say, 'We're going to put something in place and we'll work to achieve it,'" he said.

In his opening statement, Bush also highlighted that Iraq's new government had accepted, in discussions with top US officials, a timeline for resolving some of the most contentious issues it faces.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has "agreed to a schedule for resolving issues such as disarming illegal militias and death squads, sharing oil revenues, amending the Iraqi constitution and reforming the de-Baathification process," he said.

De-Baathification refers to the purge of members of ousted dictator Saddam Hussein's Baath party from key positions in Iraqi government and society.

Referring to Maliki, Bush said: "We're with him, so long as he continues to make tough decisions. That's what we expect."

Asked what would happen if Maliki's government did not meet what Bush described as "benchmarks" for progress, the US president sidestepped the question and focused instead on the process for setting targets.

"The first objective is to develop benchmarks that the government agrees with and that we think are important," he said, stressing the need for the Iraqi government to "buy in" to the goals.

"It'll be beneficial for the government to say to the Iraqi people, 'here's what we intend to do and here's when we intend to do it.' It'll also be beneficial for the American people to be able to see that this Iraqi government is going to make the difficult decisions necessary to move forward," he said.

The U.S. military on Thursday announced the deaths of five U.S. troops in fighting in Iraq, raising to 96 the number of American forces killed this month.

The four Marines and one Navy sailor all died in fighting in Anbar province, a hotbed of the Sunni insurgency against U.S. troops and their Iraqi government allies.

The 96 deaths is the highest monthly total since October 2005, when the same number of American forces were killed.Before that the deadliest months were January 2005, at 107; November 2004 at 137 and April 2004, at 135.

The sailor was assigned to the 3rd Naval Construction Regiment, the military said. Two of the Marines were attached to Regimental Combat Team 5, and two others to Regimental Combat Team 7. All died Wednesday from wounds suffered in attacks that day, it said.

The names of the dead were being withheld pending notification of their families.

Meanwhile, an angry Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki disavowed a joint U.S.-Iraqi raid in the capital's Sadr City slum Wednesday, and criticized the top U.S. military and diplomatic representatives in Iraq for saying his government needs to set a timetable to curb violence in the country.

The U.S. military on Thursday announced the deaths of five U.S. troops in fighting in Iraq, raising to 96 the number of American forces killed this month.The four Marines and one Navy sailor all died in fighting in Anbar province, a hotbed of the Sunni insurgency against U.S. troops and their Iraqi government allies.

The latest deaths raised to 96 the number of U.S. forces killed in October, the highest toll for any month this year and on course to surpass the October 2005 total of 96.Before that the deadliest months were January 2005, at 107; November 2004 at 137 and April 2004, at 135.

The sailor was assigned to the 3rd Naval Construction Regiment, the military said. Two of the Marines were attached to Regimental Combat Team 5, and two others to Regimental Combat Team 7. All died Wednesday from wounds suffered in attacks that day, it said.

The names of the dead were being withheld pending notification of their families.

Meanwhile, Al-Maliki spoke at a news conference a day after U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said Iraqi leaders had agreed to set deadlines by year's end for achieving specific political and security goals laid out by the United States, including reining in militia groups.

"I affirm that this government represents the will of the people and no one has the right to impose a timetable on it," the prime minister said.

The prime minister dismissed U.S. talk of timelines as driven by the coming midterm elections in the United States. "I am positive that this is not the official policy of the American government but rather a result of the ongoing election campaign. And that does not concern us much," he said.

Al-Maliki complained that he was not consulted beforehand about the Sadr City offensive. The raid was conducted by Iraqi special forces backed by U.S. advisers and was aimed at capturing a top militia commander wanted for running a Shiite death squad.

"We will ask for clarification to what has happened," al-Maliki said. "We will review this issue with the Multinational Forces so that it will not be repeated."

Mouwafak al-Rubaie, his national security adviser, later told The Associated Press that al-Maliki's anger grew out of a misunderstanding that had since been cleared up with Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq.

While the U.S. military said the raid had been cleared in advance with al-Maliki's government, President Bush acknowledged that al-Maliki himself may not have been consulted.

"We need coordinate with him. That makes sense to me. And there's a lot of operations taking place which means sometimes communications are not as good as they should be. And we'll continue to work very closely with the government to make sure communications are solid," Bush said at his own news conference.

Military action in Sadr City is especially sensitive for the prime minister.

Until Wednesday, U.S. and Iraqi forces had largely avoided the densely populated slum, a grid of rutted streets and tumble-down housing that is home to 2.5 million Shiites and under the control of anti-American cleric Muqtada's al-Sadr's Mahdi Army.

Reining in the Mahdi Army and the other major militia, the Badr Brigades, remains one of the thorniest problems facing al-Maliki. His fragile Shiite-dominated government derives much of its power from the al-Sadr's faction and from the Supreme Council for the Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI, which operates the Badr Brigades.

The U.S. military said Mahdi Army militiamen fought back in the Sadr City raid and that the Americans called in an air strike and cordoned the sprawling east Baghdad region.

Late Wednesday the military said it had killed 10 suspected militia fighters and wounded two in the battle. It did not identify the wanted militia leader or say whether he was still at large. Earlier, police and hospital officials said four people were killed and at least 18 wounded.

The military also said it had raided a mosque in Sadr City looking for a missing U.S. soldier and his kidnappers. The soldier was not found but three suspects were detained.

Residents living near Sadr City said gunfire and air strikes began about 11 p.m. Tuesday and continued for hours. The neighborhood was sealed to outsiders before dawn.

Groups of young men in black fatigues favored by the Mahdi Army were seen driving toward the area to join the fight. Explosions and automatic weapons fire were heard above the noise of U.S. helicopters circling overhead firing flares.

Crowds of Shiite men, some carrying pistols and others hoisting giant posters of al-Sadr, swarmed onto the district's streets Wednesday morning, chanting, "America has insulted us."

Throughout the day and into the night, U.S. F-16 jet fighters growled across the Baghdad sky, and at one point the report of tank cannon fire echoed across the city five times in quick succession.

Streets were empty and shops closed, although the district still had electricity from the national power grid.Well after nightfall, residents said all roads into the slum remained blocked by U.S. and Iraqi forces. U.S. soldiers were searching all cars.

A frustrated motorist waiting at one checkpoint jumped out of his car and called for al-Maliki to resign."Where is al-Maliki? It would be more honorable for him to resign. Why is he letting the Americans do this to us," the driver could be heard to scream.

Falah Hassan Shanshal, a lawmaker from al-Sadr's political bloc, said women and children had been killed, although videotape pictures of the bodies from the neighborhood taken at the local morgue showed only male victims.

"If there was an arrest operation, it should have been carried out by the Iraqi authorities, and not like this where air cover is used as if we were in a war zone," Shanshal said in an interview with the government's al-Iraqiya television station.

German Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung on Wednesday, October 25, ordered an investigation after a newspaper printed photographs of German soldiers in Afghanistan playing and posing with a skull.

"These pictures revolt and mystify me," Jung told the popular daily Bild, which splashed the photographs on its front page, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).The minister threatened to dismiss the soldiers in question and said they were likely to face not only a military probe but criminal proceedings.

"People who behave like this have no place in the Bundeswehr (the Armed Forces)," he told reporters.The photographs show four German soldiers from the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) displaying the skull like scalp hunters.

In one picture, a soldier mounts it on the cablecutter at the front of the group's patrol vehicle, which bears both the German flag and the acronym for the international force, ISAF.

In another, a soldier in a camouflage uniform and bullet-proof vest poses with the skull next to his exposed penis.Bild said the photographs were taken in spring 2003.

Politicians and lawmakers from all parties expressed shock over the photos which come over two years after images were published of US soldiers abusing prisoners at Iraq's Abu Ghraib jail, a revelation which severely damaged the US army's reputation.

"Their (the soldiers') irresponsible and inexcusable behaviour damages the image of the army and of our country," Reuters quoted Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier as saying in a statement.

The publication follows allegations German soldiers abused a Turkish man with German residency in Afghanistan before he was sent to the US prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Criminal Probe

The general inspector of the Bundeswehr, Wolfgang Schneiderhan, said two soldiers had been taken in for questioning, one of whom has completed his tour of duty in Afghanistan and has left the army.

The state prosecuter's office in Potsdam, outside Berlin, confirmed that it had launched a criminal investigation into the affair.

"We have opened an investigation against unknown persons on charges of disturbing the peace of the dead."Germany is the second biggest supplier of peacekeepers to Afghanistan and holds the command of ISAF in the north of the country.

There are about 2,750 Germans serving with the force.The scandal broke just hours before the German cabinet was due to discuss Germany's continued involvement in Afghanistan.

It also coincided with the release of the defence ministry's first major policy manifesto since 1994, which Jung said paves the ground for Germany's readiness to take on more international peacekeeping missions.

The Bundestag, or lower house of the German parliament, voted last month to extend their mandate in Afghanistan until October 2007, given the worsening security situation.

Officials and rights activists said earlier in the month that five years after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan to topple the Taliban movement, the West's strategy had proved failure in putting the country on the "path of progress."

According to Tom Engelhardt’s editorial in the Oct. 18 issue of The Nation, the U.S.-backed tribunal of Saddam Hussein will likely delay its verdict until Nov. 5, which he notes makes it fall on the day of midterm elections.

What Engelhardt finds hard to accept is the fact that many in the mainstream media seem to have put a guilty verdict forward as a foregone conclusion, but almost none of them seem to have noticed the correlation between the verdict’s date and the midterm elections.

Engelhardt admits in his article that he had not made the connection himself until he had read an issue of the email newsletter "No Comment" by Columbia University law professor Scott Horton. When Engelhardt found only a handful of stories mentioning the correlation on the internet, he called Horton directly and asked if he thought Karl Rove had any part in it.

"For sure," Horton replied, adding that the date was picked to imply some sort of progress in Iraq. "And the American public will see Saddam condemned to death and see it as a positive thing."

Horton pointed out that three major spikes have occurred in polling figures: the day Hussein was captured, the day of the first democratic elections in Iraq, and the day Iraqi al-Qaida leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed.

"Based on those three, it’s easy to project that they will get a mild bump out of this," Horton said.

Horton found it surprising that reporters had not noted the connection between the verdict and election day, but he did not think it was a coincidence."In my experience, everything that comes out of Baghdad is very carefully prepared for American domestic consumption," he said.

Horton also noted that he had spoken to lawyers and judges in Iraq concerning the special tribunal for Hussein, and most had a negative view of it. While the vast majority Horton spoke to did not support Hussein, they felt the tribunal is a blot on Iraq due to its lack of independence.

"There is a team of American lawyers working as special legal advisors out of the US embassy, who drive the whole thing," Horton said. "They have been involved in preparing the case and overseeing it from the beginning. The trial, which is shown on TV, has mild entertainment value for Iraqis, but they refer to it regularly as an American puppet theater."

Engelhardt concluded his editorial by criticizing Bush for using what amounts to a public execution to boost polls."Virtually all the news in the mainstream media is staged for a political or commercial purpose," said Mike Adams, the creator of the CounterThink political cartoons.

"This Saddam event is being packaged, timed and delivered to coincide precisely with the mid-term elections in order to convince voters that America is winning the war on terror. The manipulation is so blatant that it’s laughable, yet it still works on gullible voters who seem to have no clue how they’re being manipulated."

655,000 dead, government death squads wiping out families, mass starvation and malnourishment.

The government is venal and corrupt, promotes fanatical sectarianism, and hides the true scale of deaths; so far 1.6 million people have had to become refugees.

I think we can safely call this a humanitarian catastrophe, so when are the Americans going to invade?

Oh, wait...

In an exclusive interview , a prominent Iraqi Baathist says that the Baathist resistance in Iraq is preparing a major offensive for January 2007, and that as long as the United States refuses to open an unconditional dialogue with the Baathists, the armed resistance and its allies, there will be no respite from the withering attacks that have left more than 85 U.S. troops dead this month alone.

Salah Mukhtar, a former top Iraqi diplomat, says the resistance movement has secured control of most of Baghdad in anticipation of an American withdrawal from Iraq. Many members of the Iraqi national assembly are sympathetic to the Baath Party and the resistance, he says, and many of the tribal leaders of Iraq—both in the western province of Anbar and in parts of the mostly Shiite south—now support the Baathists.

Mukhtar served at the United Nations and as Iraq’s ambassador to India. In 2003, at the time of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Mukhtar was the Iraqi ambassador to Vietnam. Previously, he served as a top aide to Tariq Aziz, the Iraqi information minister and foreign minister under Saddam Hussein. (The entire text of the interview with Mukhtar can be read here.) Although Mukhtar does not speak for the resistance or for the Baath Party in an official capacity, he is close contact with both. From exile in Yemen he writes prolifically about the Baath and the resistance—something he could not do without their tacit approval.

Few of his comments, of course, can be independently verified. The Iraqi resistance movement is a cell-based one—and the cells represent different views along the secular-sectarian spectrum. Exaggerated claims, it is important to note, are part of the media strategy of these cells. As a leading member of the now-deposed Iraqi government, Mukhtar carries a pronounced anti-Iranian bias as well as a bias against the Shiite-dominated government in power. But much of what he says rings true, and he brings a perspective that is rarely heard in the debate about Iraq within the United States. Too often, the media limits its coverage to spokesmen for the ruling Shiite-Kurdish alliance and spokesman for the moderate, often pro-American Sunnis who have been elected to the national assembly. The views of the resistance are not included.

According to Mukhtar, the resistance is escalating its operations for what he expects will be a decisive showdown with the United States early in 2007, although he does not expect that there will be an attempt to overrun the highly fortified Green Zone, the headquarters of the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

“There has been talk in Baghdad about liberating the Green Zone, especially over the past few weeks,” says Mukhtar, who spoke to this reporter by telephone from Yemen.

But this is not likely for the time being. … The victory of the resistance in Iraq will not be achieved by one battle.
We expect the first month of next year [January 2007] will be decisive. The Americans are exhausted, and the resistance is preparing simultaneous attacks on American forces everywhere. The increase in U.S. casualties are rising sharply as part of a decision by the resistance to increase these attacks.

The recent mortar attack on a large U.S. facility near Baghdad, which set off a prolonged series of explosions after an ammunition dump was struck, is the kind of attack that can be expected in the future. “The attack on the American base was part of a new strategy to inflict heavy casualties on American troops in Iraq,” says Mukhtar. The month of October is shaping up as one of the deadliest for Americans since the start of the conflict in 2003, and President Bush has admitted last week that the Iraqi resistance is trying to have an impact on the November 7 elections by underlining America’s inability to secure Iraq.

Mukhtar asserts that the resistance can easily seize control if the United States withdraws from Iraq. “The armed resistance has finished all the preparations to control power in Iraq,” says Mukhtar, who is in close contact with Baath Party officials inside and outside Iraq and with leaders of the Iraqi resistance.

The middle class collaborators with the United States have started to leave Iraq already. Most of them are outside Iraq: Ahmed Chalabi, Iyad Allawi and others. A second wave of agents are preparing to leave, and some have already left, to Jordan, to Syria, to Britain, and some other places, because the strategic conflict, practically speaking, has reached the point of putting an end to the occupation. The resistance is controlling Baghdad now.

He adds that if and when the United States begins to leave Iraq, the principal threat to the country’s security will come not from civil war, but from Iraq’s neighbor, Iran, which has close ties to many of the Iraqi clergy, political parties, militias and paramilitary forces.

The only thing we are worried about is direct intervention by Iran. … That’s why we want the U.N. Security Council to declare its opposition to any outside intervention in Iraq, to guarantee that Iran won’t intervene in Iraq. Otherwise, those people allied with the United States will have to leave when the United States leaves. The resistance holds the ground almost everywhere in Iraq.

The resistance, says Mukhtar, is led primarily by highly trained officers of the former Iraqi army, and its leaders include both Sunnis and Shiites, Arabs and Kurds, Muslims and Christians. And although it is strongest in Baghdad and in Anbar, it has support throughout the southern half of Iraq, where many Shiites are turning against the Iran-backed forces such as the Mahdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr and the Badr Brigade of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), he says.

“There is a silent majority in the south, which is against the occupation and against Iran. They are fed up with the crimes of the pro-Iranian groups,” he says.

“In the south, in many cities, Iran even has official offices, and the Iranian intelligence service is controlling areas of southern Iraq. They are using Iranian money. You can tell a taxi driver, ‘Go to the office of the Iranian intelligence service,’ and they will take you. But the silent majority in the south is fed up with Iranian influence in that area. That’s why we are not concerned with the situation in the south, except for the threat of direct Iranian intervention.”

The United States, says Mukhtar, has no alternative in Iraq except to open talks with the Baath Party and the resistance. Saturday, Alberto Fernandez, a U.S. State Department official, told Al Jazeera that the United States is “open to dialogue” with all forces in Iraq except al-Qaida. In fact, if the United States begins to withdraw forces from Iraq after the November 7 election, Washington will have little choice but to open negotiations with Baathists.

Mukhtar revealed, for the first time, that both Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have met with Saddam Hussein in prison during recent visits to Iraq, seeking his help.

They both tried to convince him to make statements calling on the resistance to lay down its arms and to cooperate in the so-called political process. He rejected that. But they told him, ‘You can choose between the fate of Mussolini and the fate of Napoleon Bonaparte.’ Later, they alluded to something else, involving the return of the Baath party … And now some Arab governments are pressuring the United States to accept the return of the Baath Party to guarantee the stability of Iraq. Saudi Arabia, Yemen and some other Gulf states have contacted the United States to convince the United States to reinstate the Baath Party as the only solution to minimize Iranian influence in the region.

Mukhtar also says that the United States is looking for an Iraqi general to stage a coup d’etat , in order to create a strongman regime that could stabilize Baghdad and crack down on what he calls “Iranian gangs,” referring to Shiite death squads:

The United States has made contact with some Iraqis, old generals, old army Baathist generals, to topple the government of [Prime Minister Nouri] al-Maliki. They are based in Jordan. Some of them accepted to cooperate with the United States, to crack down on the Mahdi Army and other gangs. And they contacted some tribes in Anbar. They are preparing an attack on Iranian gangs in Iraq, and it will happen, soon.

The increase in the volume of mass killings has increased the willingness of the Iraqi people to accept a military coup. I would say that 80 per cent of the Iraqi people are willing to accept it, to accept anything that would help to crush the Iranian gangs [i.e., the Mahdi Army and the SCIRI’s Badr Brigade]. That coup will be supported by the United States, to purge the Iranian gangs and groups, and destroy them by military might and to establish a military dictatorship for some time.

You know, Iran has said, if it is attacked by the United States, it will attack American troops in Iraq. And this kind of threat is a very serious one. If you combine the attacks on the United States by the Iranian gangs with the attacks of the armed resistance, it will be a big tragedy for the United States. So the American government is trying to minimize the influence of Iranian forces in Iraq before any practical move against Iran.

If [a coup] happens it will be a crazy move by the United States. It will prove again that the United States doesn’t understand the Iraqi situation. Most of the army, the old army, 99 per cent of them, are Baathists. Either the new generals will cooperate with the Baath party, or they will be toppled by the Baath party.

The ongoing crisis in Iraq, it is now widely understood, cannot be solved militarily. It requires a political solution. Such a solution involves two parts: first, an agreement among Iraq’s neighbors—including Iran and Syria— to participate in building a stable Iraq; and second, a political settlement that trades an agreement for a U.S. withdrawal for a ceasefire by the armed resistance and their participation in a national unity government. To that end, the remnants of the Iraqi Baath party and their allies are indispensable.

Faris Thamir carefully watches the street in his Al-Batawin neighbourhood, afraid the police or militia men might try to kill him.

In Iraq, where religious radicals consider homosexuality a sin punishable by death, gays have good reason to worry about being "outed".Thamir, 35, is wary of the extremist Islamic groups that prowl the streets of the capital - but neither does he trust the police who are supposedly there to protect him.

Thamir and other gay men complain about frequent mistreatment by police, accusing them of blackmail, torture, sexual abuse and theft. "Policemen raped me several times at gunpoint and threatened to hand me over to extremist groups if I refuse," said Thamir.

Concern about the involvement of policemen in criminal acts have also been raised by western officials and Sunni Arab leaders who say the Shia-controlled interior ministry has been infiltrated by Shia militias, like the Badr Brigades, who allegedly use their uniforms as cover to kidnap, torture and murder.

Earlier this month, the head of 8th National Police Brigade, one of Baghdad's frontline police units, was detained on suspicion of involvement with sectarian death squads. Several thousand policemen have been dismissed and face prosecution for criminal acts.

Thamir does not count on any official help anymore. After spending a month in prison - during which he said he was tortured and beaten - police continued to pursue him. So he hid at a friend’s house - and only dares to go out twice a month, disguised as a woman.

For him, the Saddam era seems like a "golden" time because homosexuality was discreetly tolerated. "Now I am desperate because I expect either to be shot or beheaded at any moment," he said.

The legal situation for gays in Iraq today remains vague. According to research by Södertörn University in Stockholm, it is unclear to date whether a new law on the family, approved by the Interim Governing Council in December 2003, prohibits homosexual activities.

Under Islamic law, homosexual practise is a crime that carries the death sentence. Article two of the Iraqi constitution approved by referendum in December 2005 refers to Islam as being "the official religion of the state and a basic source of legislation". But the extent to which state laws upholds Sharia is still under dispute.

Meanwhile, the witch-hunt against the country’s gays has apparently received a blessing from one of the highest religious authorities in Iraq, Ayatollah Ali Sistani.

According to the London-based gay human rights group OutRage!, a website linked to Sistani in the Iranian city of Qom posted a fatwa against gays in October 2005. "The people involved [in homosexuality] should be killed in the worst, most severe way," it said. Although the text was removed from the website in May 2006, the fatwa has not been officially revoked.

Inhabitants of the Baghdadi neighbourhoods of Al-Amiriya and Al-Jamia'a speak of how extremist groups have killed gays in the street and also targeted their relatives.

Outrage! reports of cases where members of a family have been killed for refusing to hand over a gay male relative to the militia.

From his house in the western neighbourhood of Al-Jamia’a, Mukhtar Salah, 40, a former member of Saddam's security forces, said he witnessed gunmen kill a young man, who he later heard is alleged to have had an affair with an American soldier.

After killing him, the militants ordered people to go home and threatened to behead anyone who tried to claim the body. "[It] was left in the street for two days," said Salah, until eventually it was picked up by a National Guard patrol.

In Saddam's time, you risked being imprisoned for being gay - but homosexual practices were nonetheless common in religious neighbourhoods where young unmarried men would not dare to have any contact with women.

Nail Mohammed, 25, considers his being gay just one risk among many others. In the Al-Fadhil neighbourhood where he lives, extremist Islamic groups kill gay men, but also people who wear jeans or drink alcohol. In the past six months, he said three of his closest friends have been killed for drinking.

Bilal Arif, 40, a Baghdad lawyer, feels Iraqi society is going from bad to worse: open and secular from the 1950s to the 1970s, it turned into a military dictatorship under Saddam and is now moving towards religious extremism, he says.

Arif doubts that homosexuals are being systematically targeted. Rather, he suspects they are the victims of "the mess all over Iraq" which allows people to take the law into their own hands. "They are killed because there is no state to hold the murderers responsible or pursue them judicially," he said.

Paradoxically, those who kill gays believe they are acting within the law as the Sharia, which they adhere to, deems homosexuality a crime punishable by death.

In so-called religious courts, supervised by clerics, with no official authority, gays are tried, sentenced to death and then executed by militiamen.

Such courts were first established by Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr, father of Muqtada al-Sadr, in 1999 in secret to adjudicate on Islamic issues. Now they are present in many predominantly Shia towns like Ammara, Basra, Ramadi and in several Shia neighbourhoods in Baghdad such as Shu´la, Hurria and Sadr City.

Due to the absence of the state in large areas of the country, these illegitimate courts have gained more and more popular support.

The trials, presided over by young inexperienced clerics, are held in Husseiniyas (Shia mosques), offices of the Sadr movement or, particularly in Shu'la and Sadr City, in ordinary halls. Gays and rapists face anything from 40 lashes to the death penalty.

Mohammed al-Saidi, one of the self-appointed judges in Sadr City, believes that homosexuality is on the wane in Iraq. "Most [gays] have been killed and others have fled," he said. Indeed, the number who've sought asylum in the UK has risen noticeably over the last few months.

Saidi insists the religious courts have a lot to be proud of, "We now represent a society that asked us to protect it not only from thieves and terrorists but also from these [bad] deeds."

Basim al-Shara'a is an IWPR contributor in Baghdad.(The names of people featured in this piece have been changed for security reasons)

Al-Hurriya district has been witnessing a series of horrendous crimes perpetrated by squads from Mashtal Awwad (Awwad's Orchard)-which was confiscated by Ahmad Chalabi after the war.

This orchard consists of an old house, repaired just last year, with a giant swimming pool, dance and party hall, and, most importantly, iron cages!One hundred and forty iron cages, large enough for only one person to sit still in, can be found within the area of the orchard.

In addition, more than 70 brand new Land Cruisers without license plates were found along with cars used for death and kidnapping. The following makes were among them: six Opals, 9 BMWs, as well as an area where stolen cars were stored after their owners were killed.

We turn your attention to the fact that corpses of entire families of There was a corpse of a man who had been crucified on the wall of the orchard on June 13, 2006. Today, he is nothing but a skeleton!

If you would like to see for yourself, go and walk near the outer wall of the orchard (al-Mashtal Street) across from the Flour Factory (as on the accompanying maps). Because many of the corpses were found precisely at that wall, their numbers increase and decrease daily due to Chalabi’s squads throwing the corpses in garbage heaps around Baghdad.

If you have friends or relatives living near Chalabi’s orchard, they will no doubt tell you what they heard of torture, as well as the disgusting smell that fills the street.

I am speaking as an eyewitness to these realities, since I worked as an
Agricultural Engineer in this place responsible for arranging the orchard. I got this work through one of my relatives who had worked as a personal guard for Ahmad Chalabi. When I had asked him about those people who had been imprisoned in
those cages, he said that they were terrorists!

I myself had never seen anyone being killed, but I have seen the corpses of men, women and children thrown in every corner of the orchard. Every day, the forms change and traces of torture appear on them as blood flows from this place.

A turbaned man, whom I do not know exactly, frequented the orchard. One of the guards said to me that his name was Jalaluldeen Al-Saghir (A member of Iraqi Parialment), and Imam at Baratha Mosque in Baghdad who had also participated in the crimes. I learned that he was a man who loves women, wine and collecting rare artifacts for smuggling outside Iraq.

I was only working three days a week. My visit at the orchard was brought about by guards there contacting me so as to find all the fellaheen there that day. However, I am only an engineer responsible for arranging the orchard. When I learned of these crimes, I tried to slowly withdraw from this work, because these people knew nothing of what I knew.

But, at my sudden departure, personal rmored cards began frequenting our house. My family told them that I was missing and that no one knew my whereabouts. Now I am outside Iraq. Believe me, after what I have seen, I will never return to Iraq whatever the circumstances.
---------

The Iraqi League keeps the name and details of this witness who confirmed his willingness to present his testemoney in a court of law outside Iraq.

IRAN’S interventionist policy in Iraq has a long history. Teheran’s objective to influence developments in Iraq is motivated by a number of strategic factors, as well as cultural and religious interests. The most important factor is that the history of the two nations has been characterised by a near permanent state of rivalry and political-military conflict.

In terms of the cultural, religious and ethnic dimensions, Iraq represents the outer perimeter and the final frontiers of the Arab nation and culture confronting the Persian nation and culture. From a cultural, religious and ethnic dimension, Iraq represents a perfect setting for Arab-Persian confrontation. Iraq also represents the point where Sunnis and Shias converge as well as confront each other. Therefore, Iraq-Iran rivalry has always had wider Arab national and historical dimensions, besides narrow local ones.

In terms of strategic considerations, Iraq always represented the power that acted as a counterbalance to Iran and effectively fulfilled the task of Arab containment of Iran. A Sunni-led Iraq has been the main instrument of the containment of Shia influence beyond the sect’s Iraq-Iran heartland.

In the Gulf region and the wider Middle East, the balance of power between Iraq and Iran is the key to regional stability. Each of them has tried to alter this delicate balance and taken advantage of the other’s weakness at one point or other.

Iran’s present plan to intervene in Iraq has its roots in the Iranian government’s decision to lend full support — overt and covert — to Iraqi Shia opposition groups shortly after the success of the Iranian revolution in 1979. Then came the adoption of a plan to help the pro-Iranian Shia religious and political groups topple Iraq’s Baáthist regime and seize power. But after more than 20 years of operation, and despite unlimited Iranian and Syrian political, financial and military support and propaganda, none of these Iraqi Shia groups proved capable of posing any serious threat to the Iraqi regime.

During the course of the Iraq-Iran war (1980-1988), the Iranian leadership mobilised the pro-Iran, mainly Iraqi Shia opposition parties — Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and the Islamic Dawa Party — to support Iran’s military efforts in the hope of achieving victory.

These two parties helped Iran with vital intelligence from Iraq; besides their cadres participated in Iran’s military operations along the border, even carrying out a number of attacks against Iraqi targets. The Baáthist regime in Iraq managed to prevent Iranian plans to interfere in Iraqi internal affairs. Indeed, until the US-led invasion of Iraq in April 2003, Iranian strategy to intervene in Iraq proved a complete failure. By mid-2002, the balance began to tip in Iran’s favour with the escalation of the Iraq-US confrontation.

The pragmatic Iranian leadership accurately judged the seriousness of the post-9/11 Iraq-US conflict and US President George W. Bush’s determination to oust the Baáthist regime in Iraq at any price and by any means. Thus, while the American administration was fully engaged in plotting the removal of the Iraqi regime, the Iranian leadership was also busy planning how Teheran could strategically gain from any American adventure in Iraq.

This approach became evident in a number of high-level decisions taken by Teheran during 2002-2003. For example, first, against all declared ideological and political principles of the Iranian revolution and its proclaimed enmity towards the US and its polices, the Iranian leadership encouraged its allies — the main Iraq Shia opposition parties — to move closer to the US, especially during the crucial months preceding the US invasion.

From mid-2002 to invasion, Iraqi ayatollahs and prominent Shia political and religious figures frequently visited Washington or met high-ranking US officials openly. This unusual and ideologically contradictory alliance was formulated with the approval of Teheran’s religious and political leadership. They endorsed the fact that in Iranian political and strategic decision-making process, strategic interests outweigh ideological commitments or religious principles and taboos.

In fact, the roots of this 'realpolitik’ were evident in the practices of the Iranian Ayatollah’s policies long before the Iraq crisis — when the Islamic government of Iran decided to purchase US-made arms from Israel during the Iraq-Iran war and agreed to a direct supply route for the arms deal, in what became the Iran-Contra scandal.

Second, as part of the preparation to capitalise on the Iraq-US confrontation, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution — who represents the highest religious and political authority in Iran — ordered in August 2002 the formation of a Special Committee on Iraq to monitor the development of the crisis, formulate an Iran strategy and mobilise the state’s resources to promote Iranian interests in post-Saddam Iraq. The special committee consisted of representatives from defence, intelligence, political, diplomatic, and religious institutions of the state.

The intelligence arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Forces — Al Quds, created shortly after the Iranian revolution and was responsible for promoting "external jihad" — was in charge of most, if not all, Iranian activities related to the 'Iraqi theatre of operation’, including the sponsorship and control of the pro-Iran Shia opposition groups in Iraq and a direct and crucial control of these groups’ intelligence and armed wings, as well as militias.

Among the chief aims of these institutions were: first, prevent an American success in Iraq to ensure that it did not undermine the stability and security of Iran, as well as threaten the survival of the Islamic regime, at a later stage; second, establish a viable and sustainable Iranian influence in 'new Iraq’ that could serve Iran’s long-term strategic interests in the region and beyond; and third, prevent the emergence of a 'strong Iraq’ that could maintain its traditional challenge and competition with Iran, or revive the traditional balance of power between the two states and the practice of containment.

Thus, the Iranian formula was simple and well-defined: a failed US + a weak and fragmented Iraq = a strong and influential Iran.

Further, by virtue of its past association, Iran has links with all the important power centres in 'new Iraq’ too. First, the Iranian intelligence apparatus maintained strong links with and influence over the militia forces and intelligence arm of the Iraqi Shia parties that are in power now.

At the same time, the Iranian intelligence community established an overt and covert presence in Iraq, particularly in the Shia heartland in southern Iraq, Shia holy cities, and parts of Baghdad. Second, the Iranian leadership had strong links with the new Iraqi Shia political leadership. Such links were rooted in the traditional Iranian sponsorship of the Iraqi Shia political opposition groups since 1980. Moreover, many of these groups were established and even operated in Iran until the downfall of the Iraqi Baáthist regime in April 2003.

Third, the Iranian religious leadership maintained strong links with its Iraqi Shia counterparts because the two centers of Shia spiritual authority — Najaf and Qum — are now closer than ever before. Both religious centres perceive the situation with common interest, which requires a high degree of coordination, and both have huge moral and practical leverage over Iraq’s political and security leaderships.

Iran’s interventionist policy in Iraq has already attained a significant part of its objectives. In fact, despite US forces occupying the country, Iran has more influence over developments in post-Saddam Iraq than ever before.

Dr Mustafa Alani is senior adviser and Director of the Security and Terrorism Programme at the Gulf Research Center in Dubai. This article is among a collection of analysis and opinions published in the August edition of the GRC’s Security and Terrorism Research Bulletin

Once it boasted the most advanced health service in the Middle East, an education system that turned out generations of skilled workers and a population that consumed the most books in the Arab world.

Now Iraq has sunk into a mass of poverty and despair. It has been destroyed by war and occupation.New figures released by the Iraqi ministry of labour and social affairs show that nearly 5.6 million out of a population of 29 million Iraqis have sunk into poverty since the invasion.

Over 40 percent of these people are living in absolute poverty.

Unemployment has topped a staggering 60 percent and inflation has pushed up prices by 70 percent since July 2005.Today nearly three quarters of all Iraqis are dependent on food rations, double the number under the harsh United Nations (UN) oil for food sanctions regime that was in place before the invasion.

This growing economic disaster is driving 40,000 Iraqis into exile every day - more than 1.6 million have already fled to neighbouring countries Syria and Jordan.

Aggravated

According to the UN refugee agency, the majority of these people have exhausted their savings and "are facing aggravated difficulties" and a "bleak future". A further 1.5 million are languishing in camps across Iraq.

The increased misery has been compounded by broken promises for aid. In 2003 Western governments pledged that Iraq would never become a "failed state". Yet as the occupation lurches from one disaster to another, they have abandoned their promises to the Iraqi people.

Andrew Harper, the UN coordinator for Iraq, said that aid for the country has been slashed for 2007. The UN refugee agency says that donations from the US, the European Union, Australia and Japan are in "free fall".

The UN budget for Iraqi relief has been slashed from £80 million in 2003 to £15.5 million in 2006, scuppering over half the relief projects. The UN coordinator in Syria has complained that he can only spend 50p per year for each refugee.

As the lives of Iraqis go from bad to worse, more revelations of the scale of corruption and graft under the US occupation are coming to light.

The latest scandal involves allegations that one US appointed Iraqi minister has walked off with more than £400 million and is now "running around the world hiding and scurrying around", according to former minister Ali Allawi.

Commission

The fraud, described as "one of the biggest thefts in history", took place in 2004.According to the Iraqi parliamentary commission over £1.2 billion in public funds alone has gone missing since the occupation began in 2003.

Ibrahim Abdel Rahman of the Baghdad-based NGO Peace and Charity for Iraqis said, "Iraq will become a huge land of poor people navigating over a river of oil."

Two weeks before U.S. midterm elections, American officials unveiled a timeline Tuesday for Iraq 's Shiite-led government to take specific steps to calm the world's most dangerous capital but said more U.S. troops might be needed to quell the bloodshed.

At a rare joint news conference with the American ambassador, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. George Casey, said additional U.S. troops could come from inside or outside Iraq to "improve basic services for the population of Baghdad."

The military has expressed disappointment over its two-month drive to cleanse the capital of Sunni insurgents and Shiite militia fighters and death squads. But the Americans also say that for the situation to improve, the Iraqi government must make political concessions to minority Sunnis.

U.S. officials revealed neither specific incentives for the Iraqis to implement the plan nor penalties for their failure to do so. U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said Iraqi leaders had agreed to the timeline, benchmarks heavily laden with enticements to Sunni insurgents.

At the news conference with Casey, Khalilzad said the timeline would require Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government to set dates by the end of the year for completing six key tasks.

The plan seeks deadlines for passing a law that would guarantee the sharing of Iraq's oil wealth, amending the constitution, turning an anti-Baathist organization into a reconciliation body, disbanding Shiite militias and setting a date for provincial elections — all key issues for Sunnis.

The de-Baathification Commission was established after the toppling of Saddam Hussein to ensure that members of the dictator's political organization did not hold government positions.

Casey said Iraqi forces would be "completely capable" of controlling the country within the next 1 1/2 years.

Casey's estimate of when the Iraqi army will be ready was noteworthy because it has not changed even as the security situation in the country has deteriorated. Iraqis are now being killed at a pace of more than 40 each day in sectarian fighting and revenge killing.

To curb the spreading and increasingly brutal killings, Khalilzad said the United States was "inducing Iraqi political and religious leaders who can control or influence armed groups in Baghdad to agree to stop sectarian violence," an apparent reference to recent secret talks the United States has conducted with Sunni insurgents.

Al-Maliki has repeatedly said he would rein in Shiite militias but so far has taken little public action beyond a decision to move aside two police commando leaders. He issued a statement on Monday saying the military had been ordered to take action against any illegal armed group, but the declaration, like the timeline introduced on Tuesday, lacked detail.

His national security adviser, Mouwafak al-Rubaie, sought to add weight to the prime minister's directive in an interview with CNN. He was, however, equally fuzzy about what action would be taken.

"The Iraqi security forces are going to take on anyone who challenges" them," al-Rubaie said.

Khalilzad said he had assurances from al-Maliki that radical anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr would disband his Mahdi Army. But al-Sadr draws much of his power from his control over the heavily armed fighters. And al-Maliki draws much of his support from al-Sadr.

For that reason, disbanding the feared militia group appears to be a promise that is unlikely to be kept in the near term. Such a move would leave the other main Shiite militia, the Badr Brigade of the Supreme Council for the Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI, in a dominant position.

Al-Sadr and SCIRI leader Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim maintain a sharp rivalry for power over Iraq's Shiite majority. Logic dictates that both militias be disbanded simultaneously, which appears highly unlikely.

While Shiite militias and death squad violence represent a major security problem, curbing them would still leave the other half of the equation unsolved — the continued vibrancy of the Sunni insurgency that has been attacking Americans with a vengeance since summer 2003.

The timeline appeared, therefore, largely directed at luring the Sunni establishment away from violence and into the political process.

October has been the deadliest month this year for American forces. The military Tuesday announced the deaths of two more U.S. Marines, a sailor and a soldier. Since the start of the war, 2,801 U.S. service members have died in Iraq, according to an Associated Press count.

Also Tuesday, the military said it had found no sign of a U.S. Army translator missing after he was believed to have been kidnapped the night before in Baghdad. Troops continued to search the city's downtown on foot and by air.

The military said the soldier, a linguist who was not identified by name, was last seen inside Green Zone on Monday. He was then believed to have left to visit Iraqi relatives in the city.

He was apparently at the relatives' house when three cars carrying masked gunmen arrived. The soldier was handcuffed and driven away. One of the kidnappers then called one of the relatives using the kidnap victim's cell phone, the military said. It didn't say if ransom was demanded.

Across the country, police reported that 11 Iraqis, including two policemen and a soldier, were killed in bombings and shootings; authorities said 14 bodies were found dumped or pulled from the Tigris River.

Polls today showed that Iraq is the most important issue in the US midterm elections, with voters deeply pessimistic about the war - a mood that spells trouble for the Republicans.

Two polls released today, two weeks before the elections take place, did little to dispel predictions that the party is on course to lose the House of Representatives, which it captured in 1994, and possibly the Senate as well.

The Democratic party needs a net gain of 15 seats in the House and six in the Senate to regain control of Congress.

According to a USA Today/Gallup poll, Iraq is the single most powerful issue shaping the public mood - and its findings are not in the Republicans' favour.
A record 35% say the war is going badly for the US, with 58% saying the invasion of Iraq was a mistake. The poll shows that more than three out of four of those holding that view are supporting the Democrats for Congress.

The figures indicate that the Republican strategy of playing the security card has backfired.

On Sunday, the party rolled out a TV advertisement showing Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaida figures making threats against the US.

The sound of a ticking bomb timer accompanies the commercial, which ends in the orange fireball of an explosion. However, the USA/Today poll reveals that 52% of Americans think the Iraq conflict has made the US less safe from terrorism.

A Washington Post-ABC poll also showed that time is running out for the Republican get the vote out machine. The survey revealed independent voters, a key bloc, lining up solidly with the Democrats.

Independents say they plan to support Democratic candidates over Republicans by roughly two to one (59% to 31%) - the largest margin in any Washington Post-ABC poll this year.

Again, Iraq is hitting the Republicans, with only one third of independent voters saying the conflict is worth fighting. A month before the 2004 presidential election, when Mr Bush won a second term, independents were almost evenly split.

Apart from being critical of the president, independent voters said congressional Republicans deserved to take a "great deal" or a "good amount" of the blame for the situation in Iraq.

The poll shows that, as a whole, voters continue to trust Democrats more than Republicans to deal with the war, the economy - even though it is in good shape - North Korea and government ethics. The two parties are level on terrorism.

While these national polling numbers provide no strict indicator of how individual races will go, confidence is with the Democrats, who are putting money into contests for what they once thought were safe Republican seats.

Meanwhile, a long New York Times editorial today called on Mr Bush to fire the secretary of defence, Donald Rumsfeld, to signal a clear switch in strategy in what the paper says "may become the worst foreign policy debacle in American history".

A survey in the UK has revealed similar public disenchantment with the war. According to a Guardian/ICM poll, 45% of voters want British forces withdrawn from Iraq immediately, while a further 16% want them to leave by the end of the year.

Nothing new in the "Times" article "US in secret truce talks with insurgency chiefs", at the same when I already reported this two days before the "Times", Iraqi newspaper Al-Zawraa reported a denial from a leader of "Resistance Groups" saying:

The commander of the organization (resistance groups) called (Abu Omar), denies any dialogue with the Iraqi government or with the American ambassador in Iraq, He pointed out that there was a dialogue with the Americans in the past. but they brook the contact and neglected the proposals made by the resistance.

I think you noticed that this statement don’t deny the negotiations in Amman, but the most interesting is what Ba’ath party says in their updated version of political program published yesterday, especially point 4, which issued the relation between the Iraqi resistance and the USA:

The political program of the Baáth Party and it’s national resistance

4- The Iraqi national resistance and it’s government will establish a better political and economic relations with all countries of the world, except the Zionist entity, to ensure the mutual interests between Iraq and these countries, based on respect and non-interference in each other’s internal affairs.

The leadership of the Iraqi resistance, understand the nature of the vital interests of the United States of America as a superpower, and it is ready to establish good relations with it on the basis of mutual respect and non-interference in internal affairs in accordance with the international conventions, treaties to preserve the sovereignty and independence of nations and peoples, and respect for their rights and guarantee to dispose of their own material and human e and natural.

The Iraqi resistance will establish better relations based on common interests with all the neighboring countries of Iraq and, especially the brotherly Arab countries, and respect all international conventions and treaties and not to resort to force in solving bilateral disputes, except in case of self-defense against any external armed aggression.

Surprises continues, because Jordanian newspaper "addustour" wrote today about a "second" Ba’ath party, issues a statement criticizing Saddam:

A group calling itself the "temporary leadership Iraq’s Arab Baath Socialist Party" to hold a national conference to choose a new leadership of the party in Iraq.

The group said in a statement:

"the time has come to re-consider the party’s policies. The party does not allow anyone whatever his position to place himself above the party interests.

We have to acknowledge that the Party’s opportunity in survival and renewal lies in exercising the democracy as an option and giving the chances new leadership, who can cope with this sustained phase.".

The statement bore the implication of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein responsibility for the occupation of Iraq, saying : "We say firmly to those who attached to their prior positions, it is almost five years since Baáth Party had it’s last conference, an earthquake shock the party since then resulted the occupation of the country."

We were expecting from the previous party’s leadership to show the courage and bear the responsibility for what happened and acknowledged its failure to lead by the party and the state, to receive a portion of respect from the party and the people.

Sooner or later the US will come on it’s knees begging for negotiations but I hope Iraqi resistance aware the US is not to be trust in any negotiations….if they are the real resistance and a fake resistance created by the US.

The following is the transcript of a lengthy interview, slightly edited for grammar, that I conducted by telephone with Salah Mukhtar. Mukhtar, who lives in Yemen, is a former Iraqi official and diplomat who worked in the Information Ministry and who served at the United Nations and as Iraq's ambassador to India.

At the time of the invasion in 2003, he was Iraq's ambassador to Vietnam. Though he does not claim to be a spokesman for the resistance in Iraq or for the Baath party, he is close to both. Here is what he had to say:

Q. How strong is the Iraqi resistance?

A. The armed resistance has finished all the preparations to control power in Iraq. The middle class collaborators with the United States have started the leave Iraq already. Most of them are outside Iraq: Ahmed Chalabi, Iyad Allawi and others.

A second wave of agents are preparing to leave, and some have already left, to Jordan, to Syria, to Britain, and some other places, because the strategic conflict, practically speaking, has reached the point of putting an end to the occupation.

The resistance is controlling Baghdad now. Yesterday, I spoke to many people, and they said that the attack on the American base was part of a new strategy to inflict heavy casualties on American troops in Iraq.

Q. I’ve read that many tribal leaders in Iraq are calling for the release of Saddam Hussein, and others want to cooperate with Maliki.

A. Those who are working with Maliki are living in Jordan, not inside Iraq. They do not dare return to Iraq, especially those who are from Anbar Province, so they have no weight inside Iraq.

As for those who are sending messages to release President Saddam, they constitute the overwhelming majority of the tribes in Iraq. It is becoming a national phenomenon. … It started suddenly, hundreds of messages from tribal leaders from the north to the south of Iraq.

Q. Are their pro-Baathist forces in the National Assembly?

A. They are not representing us, but they are sympathetic. They are demanding the elimination of the de-Baathification law, and to open direct dialogue with Baathists. They say that it is nonsense to talk about national reconciliation without including the Baathists in the dialogue. Even Allawi and his group were part of this.

I assure you, the resistance has the upper hand in Iraq. The only thing we are worried about is the direct intervention by Iran. Otherwise, everything is guaranteed. Within four or five hours we can impose security and stability in Iraq after the Americans withdraw.

That’s why we want the UN Security Council to declare its opposition to any outside intervention in Iraq, to guarantee that Iran won’t intervene in Iraq. Otherwise, those people allied with the United States will have to leave when the United States leaves. The resistance holds the ground almost everywhere in Iraq.

Q. What is the role of Muqtada al-Sadr? Can you have a dialogue with him?

No. Muqtada is allied with Iran. … Now he is more dangerous than the Badr Brigade. The harm being inflicted on Iraqi society is from the [Sadr’s] Mahdi Army. The Badr group was crippled by the resistance.

Q. Why don’t we see a resistance movement in the Shiite areas of Iraq?

A. There are Shiites occupying high positions inside the resistance, with the Baathists. No other organization has popular support inside Iraq. But the media does not cover what is going on in the south. The nature of the operations in the south is not like the resistance operations in Anbar and Baghdad.

It is directed against the so-called Hakim group [the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, SCIRI] and the Mahdi Army, who are killing the nationalists, cooperating with the occupation. They are killing more people than the occupation forces are. But there is a silent majority in the south, which is against the occupation and against Iran. They are fed up with the crimes of the pro-Iranian groups.

You know, in the south, in many cities, Iran even has official offices, and the Iranian intelligence service is controlling areas of southern Iraq. They are using Iranian money.

You can tell a taxi driver, "Got to the office of the Iranian intelligence service," and they will take you. But the silent majority in the south is fed up with Iranian influence in that area. That’s why we are not concerned with the situation in the south, except for the threat of direct Iranian intervention.

The legitimate army has been rebuilt, the army that went underground in the invasion. Ands they are ready to control Iraq right now. Ninety per cent of all Iraqi resistance is made up of Iraqi army. There are highly qualified officers of the Iraqi army are leading nearly all resistance operations in Iraq.

They built the Iraqi army on a sectarian basis, with Badr Brigade and pesh merga [the Kurdish militias]. But there are some nationalists inside the army, and the resistance gets information from nationalist officers inside the official army.

Q. Will there be a Tet Offensive-type of attack? Will the Green Zone come under attack?

A. There has been talk in Baghdad about liberating the Green Zone, especially over the past few weeks. But this is not likely for the time being, because the strategy of the resistance is based on collecting points, as in boxing.

You collect points, one by one, to see who is winning. So you exhaust the enemy, by attacking from time to time, until he collapses. The victory of the resistance in Iraq will not be achieved by one battle.

We expect the first month of next year will be decisive. The Americans are exhausted, and the resistance is preparing simultaneous attacks on American forces everywhere. The increase in U.S. casualties are rising sharply as part of a decision by the resistance to increase these attacks.

Q. Who speaks for the resistance?

A. No one. I do not speak for the Baath party or the resistance. But I am very close to both of them. It was decided before the invasion to not establish direct connections with any other party, to prevent penetration and to make it more difficult to get intelligence. … I speak to them by phone, and mostly by Internet.

And by direct meetings, when I travel. … Some Arab governments give me passports to facilitate my movement. They play the role of mediating between the resistance and the United States.

Q. What is the U.S. attitude toward the Baath party?

A. The Americans, generals and others, contacted President Saddam in prison and spoke about the situation in Baghdad and around Iraq,. Rumsfeld met him, and Condoleezza Rice, too. She met him. And before her, Rumsfeld met him.

They both tried to convince him to make statements calling on the resistance to lay down their arms and to cooperate in the so-called political process. He rejected that. But they told him, you can choose between the fate of Mussolini and the fate of Napoleon Bonaparte. Later, they alluded to something else, involving the return of the Baath party … And now some Arab governments are pressuring the United States to accept the return of the Baath party to guarantee the stability of Iraq.

Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and some other Gulf states have contacted the United States to convince the United States to reinstate the Baath party as the only solution to minimize Iranian influence in the region.… The Baath party has taken a decision to build a National Front in Iraq, including other parties, including some Kurdish groups.

Q. Would Ayatollah Sistani cooperate?

A. Sistani is nothing. No one listens to him. He is not Iraqi. He will not remain in Iraq after liberation.

Q. It looks like a civil war.

A. Civil war in Iraq will never happen. In my family, there are many Shiites and Sunnis. And the majority of Iraqis are like this. So how can I kill my brother?

Q. Many Iraqis are being polarized by the killings, driven to sectarianism.
A. It is not sectarian fighting. It is political fighting.

In the highest leadership of the resistance there are Shiites and Sunnis, Christians and Muslims. They are working together inside the resistance, including Kurds and Turkmen. … The people of Iraq are increasingly blaming Iran and the United States for the killing. … Iran wants to control the area, by using their influence among the Shiites. And who brought the Iranian gangs to Iraq? The United States.

You remember, after the attack on Iraq in 1998, after Desert Fox, the Americans concluded that there is no way to topple the regime of Saddam Hussein without cooperating with Iran. So they started their cooperation with Iran, and it began in Europe. And the center of it was Abdel Aziz Hakim.

And then Sistani made a fatwa calling on Iraqis to not resist the American invasion, and another fatwa to cooperate with the occupation. And who is supporting the Maliki government? Who supported the Jaafari government? The United States. They are Iranians. Those who are ruling Iraq since the invasion are not Iraqis.

Q. What about the possibility of a military coup in Iraq?

A. If the United States wants to give power in Iraq to the generals, through a military coup, as they are hinting about, that military coup will be [sympathetic to] the Baathists. If its leader is not pro-Baathist, there will be a second coup against that leader. … Because all officers in the Iraqi army, the old army and the new army, are under the control of the Baath party. So there is no solution outside the Baath party.

The increase in the volume of mass killings has increased the willingness of the Iraqi people to accept a military coup. I would say that 80 per cent of the Iraqi people are willing to accept it, to accept anything that would help to crush the Iranian gangs [i.e., the Mahdi Army and the SCIRI’s Badr Brigade].

That coup will be supported by the United States, to purge the Iranian gangs and groups, and destroy them by military might and to establish a military dictatorship for some time. … But those who support a military coup will accept a Baathist coup, a second coup. … The United States has made contact with some Iraqis, old generals, old army Baathist generals, to topple the government of Maliki. They are based in Jordan. Some of them accepted to cooperate with the United States, to crack down on the Mahdi Army and other gangs. And they contacted some tribes in Anbar. They are preparing an attack on Iranian gangs in Iraq, and it will happen, soon.

You know, Iran has said, if it is attacked by the United States, it will attack American troops in Iraq. And this kind of threat is a very serious one. If you combine the attacks on the United States by the Iranian gangs with the attacks of the armed resistance, it will be a big tragedy for the United States. So the American government is trying to minimize the influence of Iranian forces in Iraq before any practical move against Iran.

If [a coup] happens it will be a crazy move by the United States. It will prove again that the United States doesn’t understand the Iraqi situation. Most of the army, the old army, 99 per cent of them, are Baathists. Either the new generals will cooperate with the Baath party, or they will be toppled by the Baath party.

This was taken from the Robert Dreyfuss website and is not connected to Iraq Solidarity News.

A leader of an armed Iraqi group has denied the existence of any dialogue with the current Iraqi Government or US Ambassador in Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad.

The armed leader, who goes by the name Abu-Umar, stated that "resistance factions" have rejected the national reconciliation initiative proposed by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, "because it is not a comprehensive plan, and lacks a lot of the objectives for which thousands of Iraqis were martyred."

Regarding dialogue with US Ambassador Khalilzad, which began seven months ago, the field commander told Asharq Al-Awsat in a phone call from an undisclosed location in Iraq, "Yes, we had a dialogue with the Americans, but they cut short these talks although our approach was supported on the political, religious, and popular levels. We would have reached positive results had the dialogue continued.

The US Administration, however, ignored our proposals and formed the government without asking our opinion and without our participation. In our latest memorandum to the US ambassador, we told him that the majority of the cabinet members are seekers of [government] posts, and will offer the Iraqi people nothing. We told him that the armed operations will increase and double in number."

When asked about Prime Minister's Al-Maliki's initiative for national reconciliation, the militant leader said, "This initiative does not entail practical steps to save Iraq, and has nothing to do with what is happening on the ground, especially with respect to the issue of the armed militias that are backed by parties represented in the parliament and the government."

Abu-Umar noted that an area in Baghdad "was bombed with 120[mm] mortar shells by the Muqtada al-Sadr group. We do not call them the Al-Mahdi Army, because imam Al-Mahdi would not send his army to kill the sons of the Iraqi people." He added, "The initiative excludes reconciliation with the Baathist and the resistance factions. It excludes anyone who killed a US soldier, and those whom it called takfiris [Muslims holding fellow Muslims to be infidels]. The initiative protects the armed militias. We do not know who this reconciliation will be with."

Commenting on Iraqi resistance, the faction leader, told Asharq Al-Awsat that, "There is a resistance [movement], which is a real one. The takfiris aside, if the Americans themselves and President Bush admit that there is resistance, why does the Iraqi government not recognize us and talk to us to agree on a timetable for the withdrawal of the foreign forces from the villages, and then from the cities, to their bases and barracks before they withdraw from Iraq? We are not saying that the US forces should withdraw immediately; this is unreasonable.

The Iraqi situation is going through serious stages, and it is not part of our strategy to get the Americans out immediately. As I explained, it is also not in the interest of Iraq and the Iraqis that the foreign forces leave the country under these circumstances. However, we are saying that they should set a timetable for their departure after one or two years, more or less. Many Iraqis and resistance factions support this idea. If the US forces announce their intention to withdraw based on timetables, no one will afterward dare attack them."

On resolving the crisis in Iraq Abu-Umar said that, "The US Administration knows full well what we want, and a solution for the crisis of the country is in its hand. We here suggest a repeat of the elections without using the Islamic religion, the sect, or the doctrine in them, that is, separating religion from politics. We do not care if people perform their rites, each according to his religion and doctrine, but we are against using the True Religion [Islam] politically.

We suggest canceling the Debathification Act. If the government is not afraid of the Baath [Party], it should allow it to run in the elections, or they should give the Baathist any chance to have representation." He noted that, "the radical Islamic trends, be they Sunnis or Shia, have failed to build the state of the new Iraq, and the Iraqi street is fed up with these ideas."

He added that, "One of our proposals is to form a national salvation government away from sectarian quotas and to depend on a strong statesman like Iyad Allawi, who, although he is Shia and I am a Sunni, showed he is non-sectarian. The man is acceptable to the majority of the resistance factions, the Baathist, the secularists, the nationalists, and the military.

We believe that he has a lot of keys for a solution to the crisis. We hear that the Iraqi street wants the return of Allawi to save the country from this tragic situation, especially since he resisted the presence of militias during his tenure, which did not witness what is happening today despite the fact that he did not form his government as he wished.

This does not mean that the current government has no competent ministers. These, however, cannot offer anything in light of the current situation. And then [the other proposal is] to prepare for democratic elections under the UN supervision."

Regarding the proposal for establishing an Islamic State and including the Al-Anbar Governorate in it, "The Islamic State plan will not succeed in Iraq; some are promoting this plan to steal more money from Iraq. The government depended on some tribal sides to protect Al-Anbar. This side is known as a money-stealing gang although it works for the security apparatuses."

He admitted that there are, "Sunni militias, but they are there to protect the Sunnis who are in power. The power of these militias does not exceed 5 percent of the power and activity of the Shia militias."

Regarding the Mecca document, Abu-Umar said, "We respect Sheikh Harith al-Dari, are proud of his ideas, and trust his policies and his signing of this important document. If, however, the provisions of this document are not implemented and the Iraqi street does not feel it, it will not be adopted.

We, the Iraqis, are one nation. I do not want to use a sectarian language. There are no Sunnis or Shia, but rather Iraqis, whether Muslims or non-Muslims. The sectarian confrontations in Iraq were planned by radical Sunnis and Shia. We strongly reject calling the Shia brothers infidels, and we also reject the murder of Sunnis at the hands of Shia militias. Today, the victims are from both sides and from the Christians as well. This is unacceptable and very painful.

The political blocs should reach an agreement to stop the armed operations. If these operations actually stop, this means that these blocs, or some of them, are responsible for these operations. If they do not, then this means the government is weak and unable to control the situation, and therefore it should step down. We believe that the government is indeed weak and unable to control the situation."

The field commander admitted that there is coordination among the armed factions. He said, "The real resistance does not inflict harm on any Iraqi civilian, even if that costs us the loss of a US target."

He divided the axes of the resistance, in order of importance, as follows: The Baath Party Organizations; the Islamic resistance movement, which includes several factions; and the Mujahidin Shura Council (Al-Qaeda) and its strong factions. There are also other unconnected factions, which are not acting under a unified leadership, but which are very influential in their areas. Some of them are identified, such as the Islamic Army, the Mujahidin, Ansar Al-Sunnah, and Jaysh Muhammad.

On the announcement by Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi about his dialogue with the resistance factions, the field commander said, "He may have possibly talked to one of the factions of the Islamic Army, which is divided into three groups. One of these groups coordinates with the Islamic Party."

On the call by some Sunni tribes for the return of Saddam Hussein, he explained that, "This call is undoubtedly spearheaded and supported by the Baath Party organizations. I believe that if they today offer Saddam Hussein to return to power, he will refuse. Besides, he is today incapable of leading Iraq. We believe that the case of Saddam will be part of a comprehensive solution for the Iraqi question."

Iraq is in flight. Everywhere inside and outside the country, Iraqis who once lived in their own houses cower for safety six or seven to a room in hovels.

Many go after they have been threatened. Often they leave after receiving an envelope with a bullet inside and a scrawled note telling them to get out immediately. Others flee after a relative has been killed, believing they will be next.

Out of the population of 26 million, 1.6 million Iraqis have fled the country and a further 1.5 million are displaced within Iraq, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. In Jordan alone there are 500,000 Iraqi refugees and a further 450,000 in Syria. In Syria alone they are arriving at the rate of 40,000 a month.

It is one of the largest long-term population movements in the Middle East since Israel expelled Palestinians in the 1940s. Few of the Iraqis taking flight now show any desire to return to their homes. The numbers compelled to take to the roads have risen dramatically this year with 365,000 new refugees since the bombing of the Shia shrine in Samara in February.

Rich and poor, both are vulnerable. "I'll need more than five bodyguards if I am to live in Baghdad," said one political leader who has left Iraq. "The police came to my antiques shop and drove me around Baghdad," said an antique dealer from the formerly well-off district of Mansur. "They wanted money or they'd charge me with illegal traffic in antiques. I gave them $5,000 [£2,650] in cash, closed my shop and went with my brother to Jordan the same night. I haven't been back."

One well-established consultant doctor escaped his kidnappers in Baghdad and fled to the Kurdish capital of Arbil where he reopened his surgery. Bakers, often Shias, have been frequently targeted. Some now make bread with a Kalashnikov rifle propped against the wall beside them. Many have left Sunni districts in some of which it has become difficult to buy bread.

Former pilots who are Sunni and served in the air force believed they were being singled out by Shia death squads because they might once have bombed Iran; many have fled to Jordan. Jordanian immigration authorities are more welcoming to Sunni than Shia Iraqis. The latter find it easier to go to Syria. Every day heavily laden buses leave Baghdad for Damascus.

All sorts of Iraqis are on the run. But the Christian minorities from Karada and Doura in Baghdad are also fast disappearing. Most of their churches are closed. Many leave the country while the better off try to rent expensive houses in Ain Kawa, a Christian neighbourhood in Arbil.

Nobody feels safe. Some 70,000 Kurds have taken flight from the largely Sunni Arab city of Mosul. Among their cruellest persecutors are Arabs, settled in Kurdish areas by Saddam Hussein over the past 30 years, who were in turn expelled by returning Kurds after the US invasion in 2003. In Basra, the great Shia city of the south, Sunni are getting out after a rash of assassinations.

Baghdad is breaking up into a dozen different cities, each under the control of its own militia. In Shia areas this usually means the Mehdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr. In Sunni districts it means that the insurgents, who are also at war with the Americans, are taking over. The Sunnis control the south and south-west; the Shias the north and east.

The worst slaughter is happening in the towns on the outskirts of Baghdad where Sunnis and Shias live side by side. Shias are fleeing from Mahmoudiyah, 20 miles south of Baghdad, to Suwaira and Kut. The Iraqi army does little to help, and Shias complain that the US is more intent on attacking the Mehdi Army than rescuing villagers.

According to one report from the Mahmoudiyah area: after two days of fighting a platoon of Iraqi soldiers "was dispatched from the Suwaira base to break the siege. They turned up for two hours and evacuated some of the women and children to the safe zone of Suwaira, but had to turn back as they were not fully equipped to handle the situation without [US] air support."

The Shias also accuse the US of attacking their own defensive lines. In Mahmoudiyah yesterday, 19 people were killed in a bombing and mortar assault blamed by the main Sunni bloc on the Mehdi Army.

Shias do have relatively safe areas to flee to (so far as any part of Iraq is safe) in east Baghdad or the Shia south of Iraq. But Sunni areas are beset so they may move only a few streets to a house they deem more secure. Otherwise they must leave the country.

Flight often brings a host of difficulties with it. Much of the Iraqi population is unemployed and depends on state-funded rations bought from a single, local grocery shop. A refugee in Baghdad cannot go to another shop even if he has taken up residence elsewhere. The lumbering state bureaucracy only shows flexibility on receipt of a bribe.

Sometimes a man may move out of a district but still have his job there which he dare not give up (60 per cent of Iraqis are unemployed); 10 days ago, 14 Shia workers from the Shia town of Balad north of Baghdad were found with their throats cut in the nearby Sunni town of Dhuluiya where they had been working. In retaliation the Shias of Balad hunted down and killed 38 Sunnis.

An e-mail from a Sunni friend in Baghdad that I received in April is worth quoting in full. It reads in shaky English: "Yesterday the cousin of my step brother (as you know my father married two) killed by Badr [Shia militia] troops after three days of arresting and his body found thrown in the trash of al-Shula district.

He is one of three people who were killed after heavy torture. They did nothing but they are Sunni people among the huge number of Shia people in the General Factory for Cotton in al-Qadamiyah district ... His family couldn't recognise his face but by the big wart on his left arm."

There is the total breakdown of law and order. Kidnappings are rife. Businessmen pay for the assassination of their rivals. Sunni militants kill women wearing trousers and men wearing shorts.Rival Shia militias fight pitched battles for control of oilfields. American soldiers often shoot at anything. No wonder so many Iraqis have left their homes or fled their country.

MOHAMMED, SUNNI TRADER

Mohammed was living in the al-Jihad neighbourhood of west Baghdad. A self-confident, energetic man who was a small trader in motor parts and a driver, he does not frighten easily. But, two months ago, he decided he had no choice but to leave his pleasant home and is now living with his wife and three daughters in a single cramped room in the house of a friend.

Earlier this year, as sectarian killings increased after the destruction of the al-Askari mosque in February, he and his family fled to Syria for safety. Al-Jihad has four districts, only one of which is Sunni, and Mohammed was living in a Shia district which was increasingly dangerous for him.

Damascus was safe but too expensive. Mohammed went back to Baghdad. But when he got to his house there was bad news. His neighbours said that while he was away the Mehdi Army, the Shia militia, had come to his home. They had asked if he was Sunni or Shia. They were told he was a Sunni. They left a message saying Mohammed must go or he would be killed. He immediately took his family to the solidly Sunni al-Khadra quarter also in west Baghdad where he now lives.

LEILA MOHAMMED, SHIA MOTHER OF THREE

"Be gone by evening prayers or we will kill you," warned one of the four men who called at the house of Leila Mohammed, the mother of three children in the city of Baquba in strife-torn Diyala province north east of Baghdad. She and her family are Shia by religion and Kurdish by ethnic origin.

The men who threatened her were Sunni. One of them offered her children chocolate to find out the names of the men of the family.

Leila fled to Khanaqin, a Kurdish enclave also in Diyala. Her husband, Ahmed, who traded in fruit in the local market, said: "They threatened the Kurds and the Shia and told them to get out.

Later, I went back to get our furniture but there was too much shooting and I was trapped in our house. I came away with nothing." He and his wife now live with nine other relatives in a three-room hovel in Khanaqin with no way of making a living.

MOHAMMED AL-MAWLA, REFUGEE IN SYRIA

Mohammed al-Mawla is adjusting to life in his new home as an Iraqi refugee living in Syria. He operates an internet café outside Damascus and sends his two children to Syrian schools.

But al-Mawla, 42, fears the comfort he has found in Syria after escaping the violence in Iraq could quickly disappear if the money he has saved runs out, forcing him to leave his new home in search of work.

Soldiers from two Army units here delivered supplies and medical care to hundreds of recently displaced Iraqi citizens in the Kadamiyah neighborhood Oct. 14.

1st Brigade, 6th Iraqi Army Division, and Multi-National Division – Baghdad’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division, recently came to their aid distributing various items.

"Supplies and resources were provided through the Neighborhood Advisory Council and brought here to benefit the people of this camp," said Maj. Robert McCormick, Military Transition Team, working with 3rd Battalion, 1st Brigade, 6th Iraqi Army Division.

"Enough supplies were brought to give the people 3,000 meals, 3,000 blankets, 50 generators, 500 camping stoves and several toys and school supplies for children."Soldiers from the 1st Bn., 6th IAD, also provided medical assistance and treatment for the people of the camps.

"The area of Kadamiyah is my responsibility, so we have come to provide the residents with anything they need to survive," said Brig. Gen. Abdul Jaleel, commander, 1st Bde, 6th IAD, "Also, we are securing the camp and helping with anything else the residents need."

Sani Jabar, a displaced local national, expressed his appreciation for the efforts of the Iraqi army and the Neighborhood Advisory Council."God bless you all," he said to members of the Iraqi army. "This is something we will record in our minds forever."Jaleel also expressed his sentiments during his visit to the camp.

"Because I am Iraqi, I feel a lot of suffering and pain when I see the situation in front of me. This is just a period of Iraq, and it will soon be gone forever," said Jaleel.

Everybody knows the bad news: In September, the lights were on in Baghdad for around four hours a day. One study has October’s levels so far at 2.4, the lowest since the invasion.

A lot of Iraqi public opinion runs on rumors, and those with their ears pricked will tell you that after three-plus years and billions of reconstruction dollars, there’s a sneaking suspicion out in town that the U.S., who’s been putting men in orbit for four decades, could have had Baghdad twinkling like Times Square years ago if they wanted to. The conspiracy theory goes that the Americans have, insidiously, chosen not to. That they’re keeping Iraqis down, man. Either that, or we just don’t care.

So the big question at Saturday’s Iraqi media roundtable on electricity, hosted by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Gulf Regional Division, was -- translated roughly from the Arabic -- “It’s been three years and $4 billion. What gives?”

Leaning slowly forward to take it was Al Herman, a senior consultant with the State Department’s Iraq Reconstruction Management Office (IRMO) who works in Iraq with the Ministry of Electricity on project management and system planning.

Herman has rebuilt and rehabbed electricity grids in 36 countries in 30 years -- if he just didn’t care, he’d probably have retired by now. And if he was evil (colleagues have nicknamed him “The Prince of Darkness,” but that’s just blackout humor), well, he’d probably have gotten himself an easier job.

But he sure had an answer.

“Nine of the transmission lines bringing power into Baghdad have been interdicted. Blown up. Down and out.” If those lines were up and operating, Herman said, Baghdad would have in excess of 12 hours of power per day. “The minister and his people have tried on numerous occasions to repair these lines. They keep getting attacked, killed, kidnapped and threatened.”

Security trumps a lot in Baghdad. And as far as infrastructure targets go, the transmission towers and wires that bring power into the capital make fairly juicy ones. They’re exposed. They’re pretty fragile. A tower, Herman explained, is easy to find, easy to knock down and not too hard to put back up.

The bad guys can demonstrate their disruptive abilities, keep MoE manpower tied up and keep Baghdad dark without, say, taking out an entire power plant – which would make it spectacularly obvious that they, and not U.S. or Iraqi incompetence, are to blame for the lights being out.

“It’s a game of cat and mouse,” Herman said. “We’re hoping over the next few months that we will be able to repair most of these lines and get them up and operating. And we need the help of all Iraqis in keeping them up and operating.”

But there’s more to the story than violence. Baghdad is also short on power because the rest of Iraq’s population is enjoying levels of electricity it’s never seen before.

Electricity and politics do tend to function in tandem. A light switch may not care who’s flipping it, but the way infrastructure is distributed in a nation is a pretty reliable sign of where, well, where the power lies. Under Saddam Hussein, the lights in Baghdad were on all day and night. Favored Baathists were even allowed air conditioners and satellite TVs. Outside the capital? They got the scraps.

But just as the new Iraq constitution has devolved much political power away from the capital, reconstruction efforts have focused on making sure the spoils of power are spread around too. So even as demand for electricity – those now-legal air-conditioners and satellite TVs, and the momentum of consumerism – has risen steadily since the invasion, three-quarters of Iraqis have twice as much power as they did before the war.

“Under Saddam Hussein, Baghdad pulled its power away from the rest of Iraq. We’ve gone to a policy to try and equitably distribute that power across the country,” Army Col. Jon Christensen, GRD’s electricity sector director, said. “So now, outside of Baghdad, they have gone from zero in some cases, up to twelve or fourteen hours of power a day.”

Overall, the GRD has started 520 electricity-related projects and completed 220 of them so far. The peak generation capacity of Iraq’s nationwide network is now 4,500 megawatts -- still short of the goal of 6,000 megawatts, but higher than the pre-war levels of 4,200. And much better-distributed, by much better equipment.“Unfortunately,” said the colonel, “Baghdad has paid the price for that.”

So what’s next? In the short term, Col. Christensen focuses his smaller projects in specific areas after they have been cleared by Baghdad Security Plan operations – moving as quickly as possible to take advantage of the drop in violence after an operation moves through (and trying to demonstrate to citizens that U.S. and Iraqi officials have more on their minds than checkpoints and house searches). And Herman has plans to “harden” the transmission towers, along with other measures, to make the “weak links” of Baghdad’s power chain a little harder to snap.

But the longer-term vision, Herman said, is for IRMO and the MoE to spend 2007 putting Baghdad on its own power footing, with more generation and more facilities in the so-called “Baghdad Ring,” so that there’s no chain to break. “We don’t want the over-reliance on the grid that Baghdad has now,” he said.

As with just about everything else the U.S. is trying to do in Iraq, IRMO, USAID and GRD are fast turning the job of building, maintaining, and fueling an Iraqi electricity system worthy of the 21st century over to the Iraqis. GRD expects to complete its remaining 300 construction projects in the next year or two.

USAID, after contributing 1,292 megawatts of generation (half from new plants and half from rehabilitated ones) to this point, will devote its efforts for the next few years to training Iraqi workers and contractors to maintain and repair modern turbine generation systems that they haven’t seen before. Although Herman likes what he’s seen in the MoE and its engineers so far.

“When they go out and repair transmission lines, they do a marvelous job, even compared to what we do in the United States. They are actually quicker at recovering from blackouts than we are in the United States,” he said. “They have experience in this.”

The future, the Prince of Darkness said, “looks brighter.” But bringing twenty-four hours of power to all 18 provinces will take “anywhere from $20-30 billion over the next seven years,” and with the U.S. no longer budgeting for new construction, that money will have to come from the Iraqis.

Even if the security situation were to improve overnight – “If you can promise me no one will come and blow up the transmission lines, I can promise you we’ll get power into Baghdad,” Herman said at one point -- Iraqis who may have expected miracles when the U.S. arrived in March 2003 are going to have to settle for the best we can do in the time we’ve had. In the reality we found here.

“What you need to understand,” Herman told the journalists, “is that the $4 billion that we have spent on electricity here in Iraq in the three years has done nothing more than what I would call kick-starting the system.”

“You don’t rebuild an electric system as bad as this one was, in a short period of time.”

Turns out electricity in Iraq is pretty much like, well, like everything else in Iraq. Held hostage in Baghdad. Better in the rest of the country. A long way and a lot of work from reaching first-world standards, but all in all, far from hopeless. Yet rapidly proving that even the mighty Americans will need the Iraqis to finish the job.

Heck, it took us almost a decade just to put a man on the moon.

Iraqi Security Forces are operating with increasing success, capturing a growing number of suspected terrorists and insurgents daily. That’s where the Tiger Team comes in.

With increased success in one area, other government sectors often find a new set of challenges. For example, growing numbers of detainees can put a strain on the facilities mean to contain them. Another such challenge : the security issues facing local judges and investigators attempting to prosecute the detainees for their crimes.

Pressed to find a solution, the Ministry of Defense Inspector General’s office and Ministry of Justice combined efforts to produce the Tiger Team.

The new team consists of four investigators, two judges and one district attorney. They travel the country processing local detainees in an effort ease the burden on local government officials and facilities.

The team is seeing success, and on a recent two-day visit to 4th Brigade, 6th Iraqi Army Division’s detainee facility in Southern Baghdad processed 330 detainees, convicting 267 of them for various crimes.

According to Ali, an Iraqi judge, when someone is arrested in Iraq, they cannot be processed without first seeing a judge.This poses a problem for most judges because insurgents and terrorists are known to target innocent families to pressurejudges to set guilty men free. As a result of the security challenge they cause, detainees can be held for some time before being processed.

According to Dr. Kevin Kavanaugh, a Coalition human rights mentor, the tiger team concept is part of a new initiative setforth by the Iraqi High Judicial Council, similar to the U.S. Supreme Court. He said this new approach helps fight overpopulation and protects the detainees’ basic human rights.

"Bringing the team of judges out to the facilities was very critical because some of the detainees have been here for over ayear," he explained.

"This allowed us to adjudicate those cases and now we have a hope of getting the case load down to where it should beand actually get detainees convicted in 30 to 60 days instead of one to two years. This is a positive step forward in themovement for justice," he added.

He said the judges on the Tiger Team are very aggressive and, more importantly, aren’t from one specific region, meaning they are less likely swayed by local influence.

According to Air Force Capt. Joanne Baker, Coalition human rights mentor, the team also helped relieve a similar problemwith local informants."In Iraq the accused have the right to face their accusers," Baker said, "therefore informants have been afraid to go beforelocal judges because they don’t want their names released."

She said the judges mandated they will be the only people to know the identity of the informants."This alleviates the informant problem and allows protection for informants so they can feel free to report crime again,"Baker said.

According to Baker and Kavanaugh, this was a first-time collaborative effort between the MOJ, the MOD with Coalition assistance, and the result is very effective, with more than 330 detainees processed on their first visit. Based on thatsuccess, the team anticipates visiting each division’s detainee facility every 90 days until capacities return to normal and detainees are processed with due diligence.

Judge Ali said he believes the approach is crucial at this time. "(As a judge) my job is to help find the solution toproblems, and our problem now is that every detainee has a right to be brought before a judge in a timely manner," heexplained.

"This has not been happening. This is why we have come here, to solve this problem. This is why I became a judge," he continued. "We still have a long way to go, but this is a large step in the right direction for detainee rights in Iraq."

The Iraqi Army took a leap toward greater independent responsibility when their 1st Division assumed operatioal control of another brigade here recently.

Marines and soldiers of Regimental Combat Team 5, based in Fallujah, turned over operational control of Iraqi Soldiers assigned to 4th Brigade to the 1st Iraqi Army Division in a ceremony marking the transfer of authority.

Iraqi soldiers serving in the brigade operate in joint and independent battlespaces ranging from this small city west of Abu Ghraib to regions north of Fallujah. "On behalf of the 5,000 Marines, sailors and soldiers of Regimental Combat Team 5, I want to say how special and important today is," said Col. Larry D. Nicholson, commanding officer of RCT-5.

This was the second such ceremony in as many months. In September, Iraq’s 1st Division assumed authority over 3rd Brigade, based in Habbaniyah. The transfer is part of a planned turnover of forces and independent battle space to Iraqi Security Forces, who will assume increasing responsibility for fighting terrorism in Al Anbar Province.

Iraqi soldiers of 4th Brigade have been fighting alongside Marines in the region battling terrorists. Now, they will continue to work with Marines, but on a more independent basis.

"In July 2004, I walked this ground and imagined what might occur here one day," Nicholson told the gathering of Iraqi commanders and soldiers.

"That dream today has been fully realized. It’s a dream realized through the hard work of the men of 4th Brigade; men on duty and on the job." Nicholson said Iraqi soldiers proved their mettle in the past months by fighting insurgents alongside Marines, sharing in the risks and the victories over terrorism.

Both Marines and Iraqi soldiers, he said, learned to trust and rely upon one another because of the fortitude displayed by Iraqi soldiers – or jundi – on the battlefield. "Last week, jundi, Marines and police patrolled the streets of Gharmah," he explained. "That couldn’t have been imagined two years ago. Marine and jundi have fought together, died together and bled together."

Nicholson said Iraqi soldiers’ courage was displayed in April when insurgents attacked U.S. and Iraqi Security Forces in Gharmah, a small city north of Fallujah. "Jundi were down to their last magazine," he said. "They kept fighting and did not stop. That bravery has affected me tremendously."

Iraqi Army Brig. Gen. Abdullah Abdul Satter Abdul Karem, commander of 4th Brigade, said the transfer from U.S. to Iraqi command was a historic occasion for the brigade, stating his Iraqi soldiers "honor the men of our country." "This is an indicator of the level of training of the jundi of 4th Brigade," Abdullah said. "We are dedicated to building a free Iraq to defeat terrorism."

Abdulah lauded the soldiers of his brigade, reminding them of the security they have already brought to the region. Iraqi soldiers from 4th Brigade fought battles in Fallujah, Gharmah and Karbala, he said. They also distributed medical assistance to local residences and assisted in rebuilding Fallujah following the battle in 2004.

Additionally, they protected electoral candidates from assassination attempts prior to Iraq’s first free elections last year. Iraqi soldiers and Marines will share battle space and coordinate joint and bilateral operations in the coming months, even as Iraqi Security Forces take charge of greater swaths of territory from Marines in the region.

The United States has shown "arrogance" and "stupidity" in Iraq, a senior U.S. diplomat said in an interview aired on Sunday, after U.S. President George W. Bush said he was flexible on tactics, if not strategy.

In an attack that highlights the problems Washington faces in recruiting and training Iraqi security forces, 13 police recruits were killed and 25 more wounded in an ambush on a convoy of buses near the town of Baquba on Sunday.
U.S. military deaths in Iraq in October have reached 80, making it the most deadly month for Americans this year and adding to pressure on Bush before Congressional elections next month in which Republicans could lose majorities in both houses.

"We tried to do our best (in Iraq) but I think there is much room for criticism because, undoubtedly, there was arrogance and there was stupidity from the United States in Iraq," U.S. State Department official Alberto Fernandez told Al Jazeera television, according to a Reuters reporter who heard the interview, which was in Arabic.

The State Department said that the English translation of the comments posted on Al Jazeera's English language Web site had misquoted Fernandez, its director of public diplomacy in the bureau of Near Eastern affairs.

"What he (Fernandez) says is that it is not an accurate quote," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said. Asked whether he thought the United States would be judged as being arrogant, McCormack said "No".

He said later: "Such statements if true would not be a reflection of U.S. policy or the views of the administration."

The Shi'ite-led government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has been meeting Shi'ite clerics this week to enlist their support in calming militia infighting in southern Iraq as well as sectarian violence between Shi'ites and Sunnis.

Disarming militias such as the Mehdi Army, loyal to powerful young cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, is seen as crucial by the United States but has proved difficult for Maliki who relies on the support of the political groups linked to the militias.

"GOAL UNCHANGED"

On Saturday Bush held a videoconference with U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, top White House officials and U.S. military officials in Iraq, who have admitted that a two-month plan to secure Baghdad has failed to rein in violence and that the strategy is under review.

In his radio address on Saturday, Bush said: "We will continue to be flexible, and make every necessary change to prevail in this struggle."He added: "Our goal in Iraq is clear and unchanging."

The White House has drawn a distinction between flexibility on tactics and a big overhaul of the strategy in Iraq, and officials have suggested such a broad revamp was not imminent.Longtime Bush family friend and former Secretary of State James Baker is leading a panel that is preparing recommendations for alternative strategies in Iraq.

But the Iraq Study Group's report will not be issued until after the November 7 elections, when some polls suggest Republicans could lose control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Democrats and some Republicans say it is time to reassess U.S. policy in Iraq three years after the invasion.

Some have suggested the administration might use the bipartisan group's findings as cover for an exit strategy.

Key Senate Democrats urged the White House on Sunday not to wait until after the elections to give the Iraqi government a timetable to assume a larger role in securing the country.

The top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, Sen. Carl Levin, said the strategy blueprint being drafted should include a schedule for pulling out U.S. forces.

Sunday's ambush in Baquba highlighted a key problem -- how to establish security when police officers are often accused of sectarian or tribal loyalties, and police and army recruits are reviled by some for collaborating with U.S. occupiers.

A local official said a bomb blast hit the convoy and then gunmen ambushed the buses, which were taking the police recruits to Baghdad from a base which was attacked by insurgents using mortars and rifle fire on Saturday.

The attack on Saturday on the base housing some 300 recruits left many dead and 80 wounded, the official said.Another 25 were wounded in Sunday's ambush. The attackers left the bodies of the dead lined up on the highway, boobytrapped with explosives.

Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad, is in an area with a mixed population of Shi'ites and Sunni Arabs and has seen relentless sectarian bloodshed in recent months.

The U.S. military death toll in October rose to 80 on Sunday with the announcement a Marine had been killed in western Anbar province on Saturday, and a soldier killed and three more wounded on Saturday in Salaheddin province.

(Additional reporting by Ibon Villelabeitia, Mariam Karouny and Aseel Kami in Baghdad, Caren Bohan in Washington and Ghaida Ghantous in Dubai)

Militants targeted police recruits and shoppers rounding up last-minute sweets and delicacies Sunday for a feast to mark the end of the Ramadan holy month, the highlight of the Muslim year. At least 44 Iraqis were reported killed across the country.

The U.S. military announced the deaths of a Marine and two soldiers, raising to 81 the number of American servicemembers killed in October — the highest monthly toll this year. The pace of U.S. deaths could make October the deadliest month in two years.

"There will be no holiday in Iraq," said Abu Marwa, a 46-year-old Sunni Muslim father of three who owns a mobile phone shop in the capital. "Anyone who says otherwise is a liar."

In Sunday's bloodiest attack, gunmen in five sedans ambushed a convoy of buses carrying police recruits near the city of Baqouba 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, killing at least 15 and wounding 25 others, said provincial police chief Maj. Gen. Ghassan al-Bawi. The recruits were returning home after an induction ceremony at a police base south of Baqouba.

A series of bombs also ripped through a Baghdad market and bakery packed with holiday shoppers, killing at least nine people and injuring dozens, police said. The attack came a day after a massive bicycle-bomb and mortar attack on an outdoor market killed 19 and wounded scores in Mahmoudiyah, just south of the capital.

The Iraqi Islamic Party issued a statement blaming Shiite militiamen for the attack in Mahmoudiyah, 20 miles south of Baghdad. The Sunni organization claimed Shiite militiamen had killed 1,000 residents in the town since the start of the year.

The Bush administration has been wrestling to find new tactics to contain the bloodshed ahead of the U.S. midterm elections as lawmakers from both parties expressed wavering confidence in Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's ability to come to grips with the rising bloodshed.

Sen. Richard Lugar(news, bio, voting record), R-Ind., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Sunday that pressuring al-Maliki may not work because he does not have much clout.

"We keep saying, 'Go to your Shiites and get them straightened out, or the Sunnis, or divide the oil.' And al-Maliki is saying, 'There isn't any group here that wants to talk about those things,'" Lugar said.

Bush stood firm in his support for al-Maliki, saying he "has got what it takes to lead a unity government." But the president noted the urgency the new government faces to stop the killing.

"I'm patient. I'm not patient forever, and I'm not patient with dawdling," Bush said. "But I recognize the degree of difficulty of the task, and therefore, say to the American people, we won't cut and run."

The outcome of a White House meeting Saturday among Bush and his top security and military officials could become clearer early next week when Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, and Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, are scheduled to conduct an unusual joint news conference in Baghdad.

The Bush administration took issue with a report in The New York Times on Sunday that said Casey and Khalilzad were working on a plan that would outline milestones for disarming militias and meeting other political and economic goals.

The report said the blueprint, to be presented to al-Maliki by the end of this year, would not threaten Iraq with a withdrawal of U.S. troops. The White House said the article was not accurate, and the administration was constantly developing new tactics to help the Iraqi government sustain and defend itself and govern.

In all Sunday, at least 44 Iraqis were killed or their bodies were founded dumped along roads or in the Tigris River. While the number was not high by the grim standards of the more than 3 1/2-year war, the timing and targets revealed a brutal disregard for the sanctity and meaning of the Eid al-Fitr holiday, which is to Muslims what Christmas is to Christians.

After fasting from dawn to dusk for a month to become closer to God, the holiday is a time when families and friends gather for sumptuous meals and children are given new clothes and toys. Muslims also traditionally visit the graves of loved ones.

"I don't think my family will go out and visit relatives this holiday," said Hasnah Kadhim, a 54-year-old Shiite homemaker and mother of four. "There are too many explosions."

Symbolic, perhaps, of Iraq's deepening sectarian split, only Sunnis are celebrating the start of the Eid holiday on Monday. The country's majority Shiites begin the three-day festival Tuesday or Wednesday, depending on which senior cleric they follow.

"Things are getting worse every day in Baghdad," said Abu Marwa, the Baghdad storekeeper. "So, it's logical that today will be better than tomorrow. That's why I have no plans for the holiday."

Sunday's killings raised to at least 950 the number of Iraqis who have died in war-related violence this month, an average of more than 40 a day. The toll is on course to make October the deadliest month for Iraqis since April 2005, when The Associated Press began tracking the deaths.

Until this month, the daily average had been about 27. The AP count includes civilians, government officials and police and security forces, and is considered a minimum based on AP reporting. The actual number is likely higher, as many killings go unreported.

The United Nations has said at least 100 Iraqis are now killed daily.

Bombers attacked crowds of holiday shoppers and insurgents massacred unarmed police trainees as shell-shocked Iraqis marked the end of the bloodiest Ramadan since the US invasion.

Islam's holy month will end on this week's Eid -- the precise date being one of many things that divides Iraq's Sunnis and majority Shiites -- after four weeks of slaughter that was ferocious even by Iraq's savage standards.

Two busloads of police recruits were ambushed on their way back from a training centre north of Baghdad by gunmen who planted a bomb in their path then poured automatic fire into their unarmoured vehicles, police said.

"Fifteen unarmed police recuits were killed and 24 others wounded," Diyala province police chief Major General Ghassan al-Bawi told AFP.An interior ministry official said some trainees were missing and that many of the victims' bodies had been booby-trapped by the attackers, suspected to be Sunni insurgents opposed to the US-backed government.

Hundreds of Iraqis have been murdered in both sectarian violence and clashes between armed militia factions, while US military casualties for October have already hit the highest monthly death toll of the year 2006.

In renewed violence on Sunday, several bombs exploded in Baghdad, killing at least five people and wounding around 50, including children, medics said.One blast hit a bakery in the mainly Shiite suburb of Baghdad Jadida, injuring 20 people who had come to buy sweets and pastries, the latest in a series of attacks targeting families preparing for the upcoming feast.

Later, three women and two men were killed and 20 people wounded when a suicide attacker wearing a bomb belt blew himself up in front of clothes stalls in east Baghdad, according to doctors and police.

"I saw a woman lying in the morgue with her shopping still in her hand," said a medic at Al-Kindi hospital.And another bomb exploded inside a collective taxi as it passed through the crowded Shorjah market, police said at the scene.

"A passenger dropped a bomb in the back of the cab and got out. The car had gone just 20 metres (yards) when it exploded, killing the driver and another passenger and injuring five bystanders," said police Major Mohammed Ali.

Shortly after he spoke, another blast hit a nearby police vehicle, while terrified shoppers scattered for safety. One more civilian was hurt while panic-stricken officers fired blindly at surrounding buildings.

Meanwhile, US-led coalition forces unleashed an air strike south of the capital, killing five insurgents with a "precision strike" as they planted a booby-trap on a road near the town of Arab Jabur, the military said.

US officials hope the end of Ramadan will see the bloodletting ease up, but the chaos has already changed the terms of the debate in Washington, where talk is turning to the search for an exit strategy.

President George W. Bush met senior commanders and diplomats on Saturday, amid reports the United States is losing confidence in Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's ability or willingness to stem the violence.

"The participants focused on the nature of the enemy, the challenges in Iraq, how to better pursue our strategy and the stakes of succeeding for the region and the security of the American people," a US spokeswoman said.

According to a report in the New York Times, the officials could decide to impose a timetable on Maliki to address sectarian violence and get a handle on the security situation, or face political "penalties".

"There is one thing we will not do: We will not pull our troops off the battlefield before the mission is complete," Bush said in his weekly radio address, two weeks before key congressional elections.

Four US marines were killed Saturday by "enemy action" while fighting in western Iraq's Al-Anbar province, a lawless desert region populated by Sunni tribes and prey to roving gangs of Al-Qaeda insurgents.On the same day, a US army soldier was killed further north.

Their deaths brought US fatalities for the month of October so far to 80, with the monthly death toll on course to become the heaviest since American forces fought the battle of Fallujah in November 2004.

And while the war in Al-Anbar is a relatively clear-cut battle between Al-Qaeda and US forces that one US commander called "the closest thing I have to a straight fight", the picture elsewhere is more complex.

In the streets of Baghdad and the killing fields around it, rival Shiite and Sunni death squads and militias are engaged in a tit-for-tat battle to cleanse areas of civilian followers of the rival sect.

Meanwhile, in the largely Shiite cities of the south, rival militia groups clash with each other and with Iraqi state security forces that are themselves often infiltrated and controlled by the warring factions.

Authorities imposed a curfew in the town of Suweira on Sunday after fighting erupted between the Mahdi Army -- a loosely-organised militia nominally loyal to the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr -- and police.

Majorities of Iraqi youth in Arab regions of the country believe security would improve and violence decrease if the U.S.-led forces left immediately, according to a State Department poll that provides a window into the grim warnings provided to policymakers.

The survey — unclassified, but marked "For Official U.S. Government Use Only" — also finds that Iraqi leaders may face particular difficulty recruiting young Sunni Arabs to join the stumbling security forces. Strong majorities of 15- to 29-year-olds in two Arab Sunni areas — Mosul and Tikrit-Baquba — would oppose joining the Iraqi army or police.

The poll has its shortcomings; regional samples are small and the results do not say how many people refused to respond to questions. The private polling firm hired by the State Department also was not able to interview residents of al-Anbar, a Sunni-dominated province and an insurgent stronghold.

But the findings of the summer survey — circulated to policymakers last month and obtained by The Associated Press last week — nevertheless provide a solemn reminder of the difficulty that the U.S.-backed Iraqi government faces as it tries to add ethnic diversity to its security institutions.

As Iraqi leaders try to diversify the ethnic and religious backgrounds of their security forces, the department's opinion analysis said that Arab Sunnis may be particularly hard to recruit.

In Arab Sunni areas, "confidence in the Iraqi army and police is low, and majorities oppose enlisting in either force," the analysis said. "Even recruitment in Arab Shia areas could present challenges as sizable numbers of local youth express support" for local militias, "thus clouding the issue of loyalty to national forces."

The analysis was headlined "Youth In Iraq's Arab Sunni Regions Not Eager to Enlist in National Army, Police" and highlighted views from those areas.

Yet in its assessment of the broader picture for Iraq, which includes Kurds and Arab Shiites, there were pieces of good news: A majority of young Iraqis would be willing to join the security forces or support a family member who did, the survey found.

On Thursday, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, said a two-month old U.S.-Iraqi bid to quell the violence in the Iraqi capital did "not met our overall expectations." Attacks in Baghdad rose by 22 percent in the first three weeks of Ramadan."We are working very closely with the government of Iraq to determine how to best to refocus our efforts," he said.

The Bush administration quietly has released findings from previous surveys to highlight increases in political participation or other hopeful signs.A State Department spokeswoman, Janelle Hironimus, said poll results are not for public release.

"Reliable and accurate assessments of international public opinion at any given point in time are important to the work of our embassies abroad and to policymakers in Washington," she said.

In this poll, nine out of 10 young Iraqi Arabs said they see the U.S. and allied forces in Iraq as an occupying force. The majority of Iraqi youth in Arab regions — half in Baghdad and Kirkuk — also believe the security situation and the violence levels would improve if the U.S. and its allies left immediately.

On the contrary, 70 percent of young Iraqi Kurds see the multinational forces as a liberating force.This survey was circulated among government and congressional officials, part of a stream of near-daily updates from intelligence and defense agencies about the political and security situation in Iraq.

House Intelligence Chairman Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., said he has been told repeatedly over the past 18 months that the situation in Iraq is difficult. But he is skeptical of polls in Iraq — positive or negative. "I don't know how you go into an environment like Iraq and do effective polling," he said.

Meanwhile, some Democrats say they are not getting enough information from the Bush administration about the situation in Iraq.California Rep. Jane Harman (news, bio, voting record), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, is pushing the administration to release what she has described as a bleak estimate on the situation there.

Harman continues to believe that the document is similar to the government's highest-level assessments, called National Intelligence Estimates, and wants it released. Administration officials have said such an estimate on Iraq began in August, and it could take months to complete.

Said Harman: "I think the intelligence on Iraq is dismal, and it is time for the White House to stop being an evidence-free zone."

Rival Shiite militiamen battled near the ancient city of Babylon on Saturday until American forces and helicopters rushed to separate the combatants.

Gunfights broke out in Hamza al-Gharbi, about 60 miles south of Baghdad, after a bomb exploded near the offices of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a leading Shiite political party that sponsors the Badr Brigades militia.

The party's supporters accused members of the Madhi Army headed by the radical anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr of being behind the blast, Police Capt. Muthana Khalid Ali said. He said Iraqi army and police called for reinforcements and backup from American forces, who imposed a curfew. There was no immediate confirmation of U.S. involvement from a military spokesmen.

Father south in the city of Amarah, where the Mahdi Army briefly took control on Friday, shops and government offices reopened and Iraqi army units manned checkpoints, keeping the militia fighters off the streets.

The fighting in both cities underscored alarm about the growing influence of the Shiite militias, who are linked to political blocs wielding strong influence over the shaky four-month-old government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.At least two people were killed in Hamza al-Gharbi and 25 in Amarah, a city of 750,000 people at the head of Iraq's famous marshlands.

Haider Ali Abdullah said he rushed to reopen his tiny restaurant after hearing that fighting had ended in Amarah."We were terrified," Abdullah said by phone. "The last two days had a major effect on our lives since we depend on this business to make a living."

U.S. forces said they killed a key coordinator of foreign fighters under al-Qaida in Iraq in an early morning raid in Ramadi, on a booby-trapped building in the heartland of the Sunni insurgency west of Baghdad.

It said the man, who was not identified by name, had been a senior leader of al-Qaida in Iraq responsible for providing weapons and financing to foreign fighters in the country, as well as producing and distributing video clips and other propaganda.

Iraqi rebels have conducted a military parade in the city of Ramad on October 22, west of Baghdad, to mark the setting up of what they call ‘the Islamic Emirate’ of Iraq.The parade was organized by Majlis Shora al-Mujahideen, the Mujahideen Shora Council, in which thousands of fighters and hundreds of vehicles took part.

The council, which brings together several Iraqi rebel groups, represents the local branch of al-Qaeda organization led by Osama Bin Laden.The parade continued for two consecutive days last week (Thursday and Friday), residents said.

The rebels brandished their weapons which included rocket launchers other heavy weapons as well as light arms.Clad in black uniforms, they raised placards vowing to continue fighting U.S. occupiers and the current Iraqi government led by a Shiite and Kurdish coalition.

The parade was a show of force by the rebels and an indication that they have the region west of Baghdad under their control despite massive deployment and use of force by U.S. occupation troops.

Fearing retaliation by U.S. troops, many families are reported to have fled Ramadi, which is the capital of the Province of Anbar, the larges among Iraq’s 18 provinces.

Eyewitness said the staging of the parade in the heart of Ramadi signaled that the rebels have had the upper hand in recent fighting in Iraq.Other major towns west of Baghdad are also said to be in rebel hands.

In one the outskirts of Haditha, for example, fighting is reported to be raging between U.S. troops and the rebels who have barricaded themselves inside the city.They are lying in ambush and waiting for U.S. troops to enter the city, the witnesses said.

Tens of thousands of Iraqis are now seeking ways to make it to Europe for asylum.Using neighboring countries, particularly Turkey, as staging points, their initial target is to reach Greece or Bulgaria.Their target is Western Europe where several countries are now sympathetic to their plight.

The road to Europe is not without dangers as almost all of them cross borders illegally after paying huge sums of money to human traffickers.Stories abound of families who have gone missing in the snow-capped mountains of Kurdistan or the high seas.

Most of the asylum seekers are young Iraqis who have lost hope that conditions in their war-torn country will ever normalize.Turkish police say they seized up to 8,000 Iraqis in the first six months of this year trying to illegally cross to Greece.

Sweden reports a four-fold rise in the number of Iraqis arriving illegally in the past six months compared with the same period last year.Other European countries have reported a substantial rise in numbers of Iraqis seeking asylum.

The exodus is said to be the biggest ever since Iraqis began fleeing the oppression and economic hardships under former leader Saddam Hussein.If caught by Turkey or other neighboring countries, Iraqi asylum seekers are forced to return home.

In Turkey, police say they have never seen an exodus like the one taking place now.“We do not know what is exactly happening in Iraq but we have never faced migration on this scale by Iraqis before,” a police officer said.

There are large-scale population movements with hundreds of thousands of people now reported internally misplaced.U.N. relief organizations estimate that about one million Iraqis have fled the country since the 2003 U.S. invasion.

Minorities are the most affected. The number of Christians is said to have dwindled to less than 400,000 from nearly 1 million three years ago.The Mandeans or Sabians in Arabic are the second minority losing its traditional habitat in southern Iraq with most of the community members currently on the run.

Mohammed al-Mawla is adjusting to life in his new home as an Iraqi refugee living in Syria. He operates an Internet cafe outside of Damascus and sends his two children to Syrian public schools.

He fled the violence in his homeland in 2003 and is now one of more than 500,000 Iraqis living in Syria — a number that is growing by tens of thousands each month, according to the U.N.

But al-Mawla, 42, fears the comfort he has found in Syria could quickly disappear if the money he has saved runs out."I sold my car in Iraq and used the money to open the cafe here, but the money I am making is hardly enough to survive on. I am scared for the future," he said.

Though Iraqis who have fled to Syria receive Syrian government health care and their children are permitted to attend school, Syria does not issue them work permits and many are unemployed or work illegally.

As a result, many say the money they have saved is quickly dwindling. Their plight is not likely to ease, with more Iraqis arriving every day.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees reported this month that at least 914,000 Iraqis have left their homes since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, with more than third fleeing since an increase in sectarian bloodshed at the start of this year.

Syria and Jordan have received a majority of the displaced who left Iraq, with at least 40,000 Iraqis arriving in Syria every month for the last four months, the agency said. More than 500,000 Iraqis live in Syria, many of them refugees like al-Mawla who fled after 2003.

According to a report released this month by the UNHCR, the U.N. Children's Fund and the World Food Program, 48 percent of the Iraqi refugees in Syria are children, 90 percent fled because of security fears, 58 percent are Shiite and a majority are from Baghdad.

One 37-year-old Iraqi refugee living in Syria, who asked to remain anonymous for fear that relatives still living in Iraq would be harmed, said he left Iraq last year after his family started receiving threats from militias.

Though he said he feels comfortable in Syria because the Iraqi dialect of Arabic and traditions are familiar, he worries that the money he makes working at a pickle shop near Damascus will not cover food and rent on the home he shares with his brother.

"We worry about the future. ... No solution to the Iraqi issue seems near," he said.

More than three million Iraqis who have been forced to flee their homes to other areas of Iraq and to neighbouring countries are facing what the United Nations' refugee agency (UNHCR) describes as a "very bleak future" after the agency's budget for offices across the region was halved for the coming year.

Andrew Harper, coordinator for the Iraq unit at UNHCR in Geneva, told IRIN that funds for the agency's Iraq programme have been drastically reduced for 2007 because of donors scaling back their contributions.

As Iraq makes up a significant proportion of UNHCR’s work in the Middle East, Harper said this cut in funds for Iraq roughly halves a region-wide budget that is already "totally insufficient to provide tangible results".

"Iraq has seen the largest and most recent displacement of any UNHCR project in the world, yet even as more Iraqis are displaced and as their needs increase, the funds to help them are decreasing," said Harper. "This growing humanitarian crisis has simply gone under the radar screen of most donors.”

Harper added that this reduction of funds had led to the suspension of a number of priority UNHCR projects. These include work to identify and aid the most vulnerable Iraqi refugees, including single mothers, the sick and the elderly.

UNHCR estimates that more than 1.5 million Iraqis are internally displaced in Iraq, including some 800,000 who fled their homes prior to 2003 and 750,000 who have fled since. A further 1.6 million Iraqis are refugees in neighbouring countries, the majority in Syria and Jordan.

Donations to UNHCR's Iraq programme from the United States, European Union nations, Japan and Australia have been in free fall since the start of the US-led occupation of Iraq, despite the ever-increasing numbers of refugees fleeing the deadly violence there.

From a high of US $150 million in 2003, the UNHCR budget for its Iraq programme fell to just $29 million in 2006. One quarter of that budget is allocated to meeting the needs of Iraqi refugees in neighbouring countries Syria, Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon.

Syria hosts the largest Iraqi refugee community in the region. Before the fall of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's government in April 2003, the number of Iraqis living in Syria was estimated to be 100,000. Local NGOs estimate the current Iraqi community in Syria to be 800,000.

A report released in May by UNHCR, the UN's children's agency (UNICEF) and the World Food Programme concluded that an some 450,000 Iraqis in Syria "are facing aggravated difficulties" related to their "ambiguous legal status and unsustainable income". The population of Syria is nearly 19 million.

On 20 October, Ron Redmond, UNHCR chief spokesman, said some 40,000 Iraqis are now arriving in Syria each month.Among Iraqi refugees living in the capital, Damascus, there is a sense of desperation that a vital lifeline looks set to be cut.

"We do not have jobs because there are thousands of Iraqis in Syria and without this help we are going to have to beg for money in the streets," said Haj Jamal, a 62-year-old Iraqi refugee living in Damascus.

"I urge in the name of all Iraqi refugees in Syria that the United Nations looks after this situation and remembers that without this support, thousands of newly poor people will be walking the streets of Syria next year," he added.

Laurens Jolles, UNHCR acting representative in Damascus, told IRIN that his office had requested a 2006 budget of $1.3 million but received only $700,000. This means its budget for 2006 amounted to less than one dollar a year to spend on each Iraqi refugee in Syria, without taking into account the refugee agency's operating costs and its expenditure on non-Iraqi refugees.

The majority of Iraqi refugees in Syria live in the suburbs of Damascus, in deteriorating socio-economic conditions. They have access to public schools and health care but have to travel out of the country every six months to renew their visas and cannot hold work permits, resulting in high unemployment.

"When Iraqis first came here they brought resources and many were not in need of assistance. Two years on, that situation has changed and many refugees are no longer able to look after themselves," said Jolles.

"The situation in Iraq is getting worse and there is no prospect of return. Without providing sufficient resources to help the host governments contain the refugee population there will be a secondary displacement of refugees to Europe. The time to do something is now."

UNHCR is now calling on donor countries to extend their funding of the Iraq programme to a budget of around $25m for 2007.

More than half a billion dollars earmarked to fight the insurgency in Iraq was stolen by people the U.S. had entrusted to run the country's Ministry of Defense before the 2005 elections, according to Iraqi investigators.

Iraq's former minister of finance says coalition members like the U.S. and Britain are doing little to help recover the money or catch suspects, most of whom fled the country. The 60 Minutes investigation also turned up audio recordings of a suspect who seems to be discussing the transfer of $45 million to the account of a top political adviser to the interim defense minister.

Correspondent Steve Kroft reports on this mother of all heists this Sunday, Oct. 22, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

"We have not been given any serious, official support from either the United States or the U.K. or any of the surrounding Arab countries," says Ali Allawi, who was confronted with the missing funds when he took over as Iraq's finance minister last year.

He thinks he knows why Iraqi investigators have gotten little help. "The only explanation I can come up with is that too many people in positions of power and authority in the new Iraq have been, in one way or another, found with their hands inside the cookie jar," says Allawi, who left his post when a new Iraqi government was formed earlier this year. "And if they are brought to trial, it will cast a very disparaging light on those people who had supported them and brought them to this position of power and authority," he tells Kroft.

One of the people praised in former U.S. Ambassador L. Paul Bremer's memoirs is a major suspect in the case. Ziad Cattan was in charge of military procurement at a time when the ministry of defense went on a $1.2 billion buying spree. Allawi estimates that $750 to $800 million of that money was stolen. Judge Radhi al-Radhi, head of Iraq's Commission on Public Integrity, which investigates official corruption, tells Kroft that a lot of the money that wasn't stolen was spent on outdated, useless equipment.

"It isn't true," says Cattan, whom 60 Minutes found in Paris and who was recently convicted in absentia in Iraq for squandering public funds. He showed Kroft documents and pictures of equipment that he says is now in Iraq. An official from Jane's, one of the world’s foremost experts in military hardware, says the documents Cattan provided were too vague to prove anything.

Audio recordings obtained by 60 Minutes reveal Cattan talking to an associate in Amman, Jordan, in 2004 about the distribution of Iraqi funds. According to two independent translations, he is discussing payoffs to Iraqi officials.

One possible payoff the recordings allude to is the transfer of $45 million to the account of a top political adviser to the defense minister, a man who is also identified on the recordings as a representative of the president and the prime minister of the interim government. Cattan acknowledged his own voice was on the recordings. Three translators say he specifically mentions "$45 million," but he disputes the translation. "I don't say dollars," he tells Kroft. "I don't remember what the matter was."

Cattan maintains that U.S. and coalition advisors at the Iraqi Ministry of Defense approved everything he did and says the recordings have been doctored. Audio experts consulted by 60 Minutes could not find any evidence of that. Judge Radhi also has a copy of the recordings and says a former employee of the ministry of defense confessed after hearing them.

60 Minutes has learned that Cattan is building himself a villa in Poland. Another suspect, Naer Jumaili, principal in a middle-man company that handled much of the $1.2 billion in Iraqi military contracts, is said to be buying real estate in Amman, Jordan, and building himself a large villa, even though he is wanted by Interpol. Judge Rahdi believes the fugitive suspects are bribing their way to freedom and says countries like Jordan and Poland have been "no help at all" in apprehending the suspects or recovering the money.

The case is one of 2,000 Iraqi government corruption cases the judge's commission is handling that, all told, involve $7.5 billion.No one in the U.S. government would speak on camera about the case. But U.S. officials say this was Iraqi money spent by a sovereign Iraqi government and therefore is the Iraqis' business.

A man claiming to be a member of Saddam Hussein's outlawed Baath Party told a television interviewer the United States was seeking a face-saving exodus from Iraq and that insurgents were ready to negotiate but won't lay down arms.

The interview with "Abu Mohammed", a pseudonym, was taped several days ago in Beirut, Lebanon, according to Ghassan Ben Jeddou, the network's bureau chief in the Lebanese capital.

"The party and other insurgency factions are ready to negotiate with the Americans," said the man, whose face was concealed.

"The occupier has started to search for a face-saving way out. The resistance, with all its factions, is determined to continue fighting until the enemy is brought down to his knees and sits on the negotiating table or is dealt, with God's help, a humiliating defeat."

Excerpts of the interview were shown Saturday.

Abu Mohammed claimed that the insurgency was the only legitimate representative of the Iraqi people, but added that armed factions were prepared to negotiate with everyone, including the Iraqi government, according to Ben Jeddou.

Also speaking on the program, said Ben Jeddou, was Alberto Fernandez, director of public diplomacy in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs at the U.S. State Department. According to al-Jazeera, Fernandez said Washington had no problem negotiating with the Baath Party for the sake of bringing peace and stability to Iraq.

But he ruled out any talks with al-Qaida, the terror network whose Iraq operation is the most feared insurgency group in the country.

Although the actual identity of Abu Mohammed remains unknown, the interview adds to a growing body of evidence that Iraq's Sunni insurgents sense that the tide may be turning against the United States and the Iraqi government it backs.

That sense appears to explain stepped up attacks in Baghdad and the audacity of insurgents' actions elsewhere.

President George W. Bush this week conceded that "right now it's tough" for U.S. forces in Iraq and U.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell said attacks in Baghdad were up 22 percent in the first three weeks of the current holy Muslim month of Ramadan despite a two-month old U.S.-Iraqi drive to crush violence in the Iraqi capital.

On Wednesday, and again on Friday, Sunni insurgents believed to belong to al-Qaida in Iraq, staged military-like parades in the heart of five towns in the vast and mainly desert province of Anbar, including the provincial capital Ramadi. Some of these parades, in which hooded gunmen paraded with their weapons, took place within striking distance of U.S. forced stationed in nearby bases.

The parades proved to be a propaganda success, with TV footage of Wednesday's parade shown in many parts of the world, a likely embarrassment for the U.S. military as well as the embattled Iraqi government.

The question of negotiations between the United States and insurgency factions has repeatedly surfaced over the past two years, but details have been sketchy. One issue that was often raised in connection with such negotiations was the extent of amnesty the United States and its Iraqi allies were willing to offer to the insurgents if they disarmed and joined the political process.

Britain's Financial Times said this week that the White House was pressuring Iraqi authorities to give amnesty to Sunni insurgents. If confirmed, that would be a major change of heart by the Bush administration, which has in the past resisted amnesty because it could potentially include fighters who have killed American troops.

At the State Department, spokesman Tom Casey said a decision on amnesty would be left to the Iraqi government.

Soon after taking office in May, Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki proposed an amnesty for insurgents who put down their arms. But no insurgents took up the offer, and the proposal was shelved amid differences over who would be eligible. Those "with blood on their hands" — either Iraqis' or American soldiers' — would not be covered, he said.

The Baath Party was outlawed by the U.S. occupation authorities soon after Saddam's regime was toppled in April 2003. Baathists were thought to have made up the backbone of the insurgency during its early stages in 2003, with funds and weapons arriving from neighboring Syria, where many of Saddam's top lieutenants took refuge.

The Baathists remain an important part of the insurgency along with Arab nationalists, but it is the Muslim militants, including foreign jihadists, who are now the dominant group.

The most wanted Iraqi fugitive, former Saddam deputy Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, said in an interview published in July that he has rebuilt the Baath party as "a revolutionary, struggle-oriented entity."

In answers to questions Time magazine sent to him in May through intermediaries, he said: "The political role of the Baath in the struggle is to mobilize and bring together the energies of the people for the fight to expel the occupation and liberate our country."