THE US, THE UN AND IRAQ VI

Kurdish official Calls for Campaign of Civil Disobedience

Nushirvan Mustafa, the number 2 man in the Kurdish Patriotic Union, has demanded that the Interim Governing Council recognize Kurdish plans for a loose federation and a Kurdish super-province by February. If it refused to do so, he called on the Kurdish leadership to announce a campaign of civil disobedience and resignation from the Interim Governing Council, along with refusal to serve in the interim ministries and a boycott of the forthcoming elections. (-az-Zaman.)
posted by Juan Cole at 1/8/2004 08:14:34 AM

After pause, Taliban renew Afghan attacks
Carlotta Gall/NYT
Friday, January 9, 2004
New spate of violence leaves 27 dead

KABUL The Taliban have returned to the offensive in southern Afghanistan with attacks and bombs on soft targets, Afghan officials said Thursday.

After something of a lull during the loya jirga, or grand council, the militants have renewed their attacks, killing at least 27 people in three days.

Twelve civilians were tied up and executed on a remote mountain road in Helmand Province on Tuesday night in an attack that had all the hallmarks of Taliban militants, police and human rights officials said. In a separate attack, two Afghan soldiers were wounded by a bombing at a military base in the city of Kandahar on Thursday.

The latest attacks came just two days after a twin bomb killed at least 15 people, eight children among them. Some 55 people were wounded in the attack in Kandahar, including many children emerging from their school.

Officials immediately blamed the Taliban for the attack, citing intelligence reports warning that the militants were preparing a campaign of urban violence.

The U.S. military said on Thursday it had evacuated 28 wounded from the bombing in Kandahar to a field hospital at the U.S. air base east of that city. The wounded were later treated in U.S. military hospitals in Bagram and Kandahar. Thirty wounded people were treated at Kandahar's civilian hospital, the military said. Colonel Mohammad Ayub, the deputy police chief of Helmand Province, blamed the Taliban for the attack there on Tuesday. The 12 villagers who were executed were traveling from their home in Kijeran in Uruzgan Province south through Helmand Province to the provincial capital, Lashkar Ghar, witnesses said. They had stopped for the night at a small hotel when gunmen surrounded the building and broke in at around 10 p.m. They took the men outside, led them up a small hill and executed them at point-blank range.

The dead men were all Shia Hazaras, said Musa Husseini, who arrived at the village Wednesday morning and identified the bodies.

Six men were missing and two men managed to escape. One survived the shooting and was being treated in a hospital, he said.

"Obviously it is those people who are against national unity who are making problems between the tribes," Colonel Ayub said. "We are investigating it but I am sure it is those terrorists, Taliban, Al Qaeda and followers of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar," a former prime minister who heads Hezb-e-Islami, a faction that has called for attacks against foreigners in Afghanistan.

"Unfortunately the situation is bad in these provinces," said Amir Mohammad Ansari, the local representative of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission. He said that some behind the attacks in the region were people allied to the government, in particular regional commanders. "The Taliban are taking advantage of this situation and making things worse," he said.

"The nature of attacks of the Taliban in the last six to eight months is that they are not choosing targets on specific grounds; they are attacking any accessible target that creates an impact," Nader Naderi, chief spokesman of the Human Rights Commission, said in Kabul. "To attack Afghan nationalities, such as the Hazaras, is easy, it is a soft target and makes a noise," he said.

The U.S.-led coalition force has a large base at Kandahar airport and recently established a provincial reconstruction team in a separate base in town to try to enhance security and increase reconstruction efforts in the region.

The U.S. military and aid officials have earmarked Kandahar as the center of regional development in an effort to improve the general situation before elections in the summer.

The New York Times

U.S. tear gas use in Iraq may violate weapons treaties

Web posted Sunday, March 2, 2003


By Paul Elias
Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO -- Army Maj. Gen. David Grange is proud to have ordered his troops to use tear gas on hostile Serb crowds in Bosnia six years ago.

"We didn't kill anyone," said the now-retired Grange. "It saved lives."

His only complaint was that red tape prevented him from using tear gas more often.

The Pentagon is drafting guidelines under which American solders could use riot control agents such as tear gas and pepper spray in Iraq to control unruly prisoners and separate enemy soldiers from civilians, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told Congress earlier this month.

Problem is, soldiers who use so-called "nonlethal agents" in combat outside their own countries are violating the very chemical weapons treaties the United States accuses Saddam Hussein of flouting.

"We are doing our best to live within the straitjacket that has been imposed on us on this subject," Rumsfeld said on Feb. 5. "We are trying to find ways that nonlethal agents could be used within the law."

Legal issues notwithstanding, the Pentagon has also explored developing other, far more exotic and powerful chemical agents that could be used in conflicts.

While countries may use nonlethal chemicals domestically for law enforcement and crowd control, the Chemical Weapons Convention that took force in 1997 and has been ratified by 149 countries including The United States, specifies: "Each state party undertakes not to use riot control agents as a method of warfare."

That provision was hotly contested during the 15 years it took to craft the treaty. It arose as an objection to the United States' reliance on tear gas to flush out Viet Cong fighters and kill them during the Vietnam War.

Whether American "law enforcement" extends beyond a nation's borders is a matter of fierce international debate. The concept will be discussed in April when the treaty comes up for international review in The Hague, Netherlands.

Weapons-control activists cite myriad reasons for banning nonlethal chemical weapons in war.

The agents can actually kill, they argue, when used in war environments. They could also put militaries on a slippery slope to using nastier, deadlier chemicals.

Irritants such as tear gas and pepper spray are tame in comparison to other agents under development.

The U.S. military has explored mind-altering drugs such as opiates, along with genetically engineered microorganisms that can destroy objects like runways, vehicles and buildings.

The research is spearheaded by the U.S. Marine Corps' Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate, which was created in 1997 to equip soldiers on overseas peacekeeping and other non-combat duties.

The directorate's mission is to help troops deal with panic-stricken or hostile crowds, like those faced in a failed peacekeeping mission in Somalia.

In one 1993 street battle in Mogadishu, 19 U.S. soldiers and more than 1,000 Somalis were killed. Some military experts say the death toll would have been far lower had soldiers fired nonlethal chemical weapons.

A Pennsylvania State University institute prepared a 50-page report with Pentagon funding in October 2000 that explored a range of drugs - including Prozac, Valium and Zoloft - for use as "calmatives" for crowds.

The researchers found "use of non-lethal calmative techniques is achievable and desirable."

Despite the endorsement, Marine Capt. Shawn Turner of the nonlethal weapons directorate said the military stopped "calmative" research because such drug-weapons may violate international law.

Turner said much of the directorate's $25 million annual budget is spent developing "directed energy" weapons such as laser or microwave guns that stun rather than kill.

"With all these technologies starting to surface in security and the military, maybe there is a real need to revisit these international conventions to reassess if they are still applicable," said Andrew Mazzara, director of the Penn State institute that prepared the calmative report.

But even boosters of nonlethal technology concede that the United States has a perception problem on its hands if it uses chemicals on Iraqis.

"The initial emotional and visceral response are that chemical weapons are bad," said retired Col. John Alexander, a member of a National Research Council panel that urged the United States to continue nonlethal weapons research. "And it's so contentious because one of our big points is that Iraq has chemical weapons."

Weapons control activists, though, see more at stake.

"I wouldn't be surprised if the Bush administration pushes against the treaty as far as it can," said Barbara Rosenberg, chairwoman of the bioweapons group for the Federation of American Scientists.

Rosenberg and others fear the U.S. military wants to weaponize more dangerous chemicals - like the drug used in November to end a hostage crisis at a Moscow theater.

Russian special forces pumped knockout gas, thought to be an opiate, into the theater and then stormed in, killing all 41 hostage-takers.

But the gas proved to be far from "nonlethal." Some 129 hostages also died, almost all from effects of the gas.

On the Net:

Chemical Weapons Convention: http://www.opcw.org

Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate: http://www.jnlwd.usmc.mil

Sunshine Project: http://www.sunshine-project.org

--From the Monday, March 3, 2003 online edition of the Augusta Chronicle

Nothing they said about Iraqis turning out the way they envisaged. So Bush has to rely on 'realists' now to fix things.
LEON HADAR
Business Times
TOKYO -- The neoconservative intellectuals who were the driving force behind the Bush administration's Iraq adventure, its alliance with Israel's Likud government and the ambitious US-led 'Democratic Empire' project are being forced to play defence these days.

Indeed, the grand designs that the neocons had cooked in their Washington think tanks and the expectations raised by the editorials published in their glossy magazines - that American would be welcomed as 'liberators' in Iraq, that Mesopotamia would be transformed into a liberal democracy, and that it would become a model for the entire Arab Middle East - are proving to be nothing more than intellectual fantasies.

According to a report in the Washington Post, the escalating attacks by insurgents against US troops have forced the Bush administration to back away from several of its more ambitious initiatives to remake Iraq's political and economic system and to accelerate the timetable for ending the civil occupation of that country.

Hence, the Americans have dropped plans to privatise Iraq's state-owned businesses and to write a Constitution before a transfer of sovereignty.

Moreover, the demands by the Kurds in northern Iraq for the creation of a semi autonomous governing body to represent them and the expectations that a general election in the country would bring to power Shiite Islamic figures hostile towards the West suggest that Iraq could be drawn into a bloody civil war and be torn into three separate mini-states, representing the Arab Shiites, Sunnis and the Kurds.

The mess that the neocons, led by Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, have created in Iraq explains the return to Washington of the realpolitik types that had played the leading role in the making of foreign policy of the Elder George Bush.

'The grown-ups are being recalled to clean up and put things back in order' is the way one Washington insider put it, referring to the decision by the White House to send former secretary of state James Baker on a diplomatic mission to persuade America's allies to agree to forgive tens of billions of dollars of Iraq's foreign debt.

Another foreign policy 'realist' who came back to Washington is the former US ambassador to India, Robert Blackwill, who has been asked to serve as the National Security Council's (NSC) coordinator for strategic planning, with his chief responsibility being US policy in Iraq.

Press reports also indicate that Iraq's Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) chief, Ambassador L Paul Bremer, has been distancing himself from the neoconservative cadre in the administration. At the same time, Wolfowitz is planning to leave the administration and return to academia early this year, according to Newsweek magazine.

But the collapse of the neoconservative project goes beyond Iraq. After all, the chicken hawks from the American Enterprise Institute and the Weekly Standard who now dominate top foreign policy jobs in the Pentagon and the vice-president's office have proposed that 9/11 and the ensuing war on terrorism would permit the United States to formalise its global dominant position.

Hence, the establishment of the 'Democratic Empire' in the Middle East would lay the foundations for a global imperial scheme in which US military power would leave other players - ranging from 'rogue states' like North Korea and Iran to major powers like the European Union and China - no choice but to bow to American dictates.

Even before 9/11, the neocons were arguing that Washington should adopt a strategy of 'containing' China and forcing it to accept the reality of an independent and democratic Taiwan.

Instead, Bush rolled out the red carpet in Washington for Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao and warned Taiwan to refrain from antagonising Beijing by challenging the 'One China' policy. China has also been playing a leading role in a multilateral effort to defuse the North Korean nuclear crisis.

And a similar multilateral strategy has been advanced by Washington in dealing with Iran's nuclear ambitions - that is, when it comes to the other two members of the 'Axis of Evil', Bush has rejected the neoconservative unilateral approach. Or, to put it differently, he is recognising the limits of US military power and is not prepared to do a 'regime change' in Teheran, Pyongyang or Damascus.

And while the neocons are 'spinning' the recent move by Libya's Gaddafi to open its weapons-production facilities to international inspection, that development should be regarded as another example of the Bushies adopting a more realistic foreign policy by agreeing to make a deal with a military dictator committed to radical Arab nationalism.

Well, the neocons are not 'out' yet, although they are certainly starting to lose some of the political battles in the US capital. But the only figure who could strike a real and final blow to their influence in Washington is the occupant of the White House. And it's not clear yet whether he is ready to do that.

According to today's local newspaper, it seems that more Iraqi's are tiring of the violence taking over their country, and they are beginning to turn against the insurgents. Let's all hope this will begin to improve the lives of Iraqis in the future.

Saturday, January 10, 2004 · Last updated 7:31 a.m. PT

Iraq attacks may signal religious strife

By SARAH EL DEEB
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

BAQOUBA, Iraq -- An apparently coordinated attack against two Shiite mosques in a town where Muslim sects had lived peacefully has raised concerns about religious and ethnic strife as Shiites and Sunnis jockey for power in postwar Iraq.

Five people were killed and dozens wounded when a gas cylinder rigged with an explosive blew up at the Sadiq Mohammed mosque as worshippers streamed out after prayers on Friday, Islam's holy day.

Ninety minutes earlier, police defused a car bomb outside another nearby mosque. That bomb was packed with 330 pounds of TNT and rigged with four artillery shells and would have doubtless caused many more fatalities.

"We've been living peacefully. There has never been a problem," said Hamid Jomoa, a 28-year-old Sunni preacher who rushed to help at the scene in Baqouba, a town 35 miles northeast of Baghdad.

With sectarian tensions mounting, the U.S.-led occupation force has been accused of stirring up trouble: Some Iraqis at the scene of the bombing even suggested U.S. forces had fired a rocket at the mosque.

Many Iraqis believe the United States and its allies are trying to foment disorder as a pretext for their continued rule, despite American assurances to the contrary. Others believe some countries in the region could be financing attacks to keep Iraq, which has the world's second-largest oil reserves after Saudi Arabia, divided and weak.

"This attack aims at igniting sectarian disputes," said Salah Hassan, another bystander in Baqouba. "This is a Jewish-American scheme."

Wailing women tried to cover body parts as the wounded walked in a daze. A man screamed in anguish as he knelt before two bodies. Blood covered the street, where worshippers who couldn't fit into the small Sadiq Mohammed mosque had set up prayer mats.

In other developments:

- The U.S. military for the first time Saturday acknowleged that a medevac helicopter that crashed last week near Fallujah, killing all nine soldiers aboard, was likely shot down.

- The U.S. military is investigating a report that American soldiers last week opened fire with a machine gun on a taxi in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, killing four Iraqi civilians, including a 7-year-old boy, and wounding the driver.

- Troops of the 3rd Battalion, 67th Armor Regiment captured five people and seized an assortment of weapons after they were attacked late Friday about 9 miles northeast of Baghdad, the U.S. command said.

- Ten Iraqis believed linked to the former regime were arrested late Friday about 12 miles west of Baghdad, the command said. They were believed part of an insurgent cell responsible for planting bombs in the area.

Saddam's authoritarian rule gave the Sunnis dominance and kept ethnic and religious divisions largely in check. That ended with Saddam's ouster in April, giving Iraq's Shiites - a majority in the population of 25 million - an opportunity to end decades of subjugation.

Since then, religious leaders on both sides have tried to prevent an eruption of conflict between the two groups.

Yet also raising tensions are increasingly strident demands by Kurds, who are ethnically different from Arabs and dominate in the north. The Kurds want to expand the territory and power of the Switzerland-sized area they have ruled autonomously under the protection of a U.S.-enforced no-fly zone since the first Gulf War ended in 1991.

Demands that the oil-rich city of Kirkuk join the Kurdish zone have roused Turkic and Arab residents to violent protests, and militants have turned to assassination.

A Kurdish man walking in an Arab neighborhood of Kirkuk was gunned down and killed Friday, the city's Police Chief Torhan Youssef reported.

Earlier, Youssef said coalition soldiers mistakenly killed two Iraqi police officers who were walking around carrying AK-47 assault rifles after dark but not wearing identity badges.

U.S. spokeswoman Maj. Josslyn Aberle said the police were killed by soldiers who saw two men firing at a house. Aberle said the two, later identified as officers, were killed after they refused to put down their arms even after soldier fired warning shots.

Elsewhere in Iraq, U.S. soldiers kicked open doors and dragged men out of their beds before dawn Friday in a raid aimed at Saddam loyalists in Tikrit. The military said they detained 30 men - 14 suspected of orchestrating, financing or carrying out attacks on American soldiers. Among them was a man believed to have detonated a bomb that killed a female soldier from Texas.

The raid came hours after the Black Hawk medevac helicopter was shot down Thursday near Fallujah, a town west of Baghdad that is a stronghold of resistance to the U.S. occupation.

Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt told reporters Saturday that the exact cause had not yet been determined "but the preliminary reports indicate that the medevac helicopter was brought down by ground fire."

Iraqi witnesses had reported seeing a projectile strike the second of two medevac helicopters as they flew south of the city of Fallujah, a major center of resistance to the U.S. occupation

In meetings in early 2001, O'Neill said he wasn't persuaded that Iraq posed as big a threat to the U.S. as Bush claimed, CBS said. In the book, O'Neill is quoted as saying he was surprised that no one in a National Security Council meeting questioned why Iraq should be invaded, according to a transcript provided by CBS.

``It was all about finding a way to do it,'' O'Neill said in the book, according to the transcript. ``That was the tone of it. The president saying 'Go find me a way to do this.'''