THE US, THE UN AND THE IRAQIS THEMSELVES, V. 7.0

Militant group 'shot down RAF plane'

Staff and agencies
Monday January 31, 2005

An Iraqi militant organisation today claimed it had shot down an RAF Hercules transport plane in Iraq, killing up to 15 British service personnel.
A statement posted on an Islamic website by Ansar al-Islam, one of Iraq's longest-established militant groups, said its fighters had tracked the aircraft, "which was flying at a low altitude, and fired an anti-tank missile at it".

The transport plane had been flying from Baghdad to Balad, where there is a US military base, when it crashed around 25 miles north-west of the Iraqi capital. The crash happened as polls closed in the Iraqi election, and its cause is still unknown.

"Thanks be to God, the plane was downed and a huge fire and black clouds of smoke were seen rising from the location of the crash," the statement said.

Ansar al-Islam is thought to have been the creation of Osama bin Laden's second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, in the months after the September 11 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.

The Ministry of Defence has not yet said what it believed had caused the crash, but the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, today said military officials would reveal as soon as possible whether the plane had been shot down or had suffered a mechanical failure. An investigation is beginning today.

At least 10 - and possibly as many as 15 - service personnel were believed to have died, but the exact numbers were not known. There was also media speculation that the plane had been carrying SAS personnel, but the MoD does not comment on the activities of special forces.

Mr Straw paid tribute to the troops killed in the Hercules crash, saying: "Our hearts go out to the families and comrades of those who were killed and those injured. These are very brave men, as are all the service personnel who have been killed or injured in the last two years."

The area in which the plane went down is not controlled by British forces, but UK defence sources said it was likely to have been carrying a number of service personnel responsible for loading and security.

C130 Hercules aircraft are used to ferry troops and equipment between Britain and Basra in southern Iraq, and between Basra and Baghdad, but they do not often fly north of the Iraqi capital.

The Hercules - which has been the RAF's workhorse for many years - is a relatively slow and low-flying aircraft. It is frequently used for humanitarian operations, distributing food and equipment. Without freight, it can carry around 100 troops.

This country and the wider world will never forget them

Tony Blair

Paranoia leads to error, Gelisgesti. You got any better ideas on how to proceed in Iraq - let's hear them.

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 30 - Defying death threats, mortars and suicide bombers, Iraqis turned out in great numbers on Sunday to vote in this country's first free elections in 50 years, offering a powerful, if uneven, endorsement of democratic rule 22 months after Saddam Hussein was overthrown.

Voters in Shiite and Kurdish areas turned out in especially large numbers, and at the day's end election officials here estimated that the nationwide turnout could exceed 60 percent. The turnout in the Sunni-dominated areas like Falluja and Mosul, where the guerrilla insurgency rages and where many Sunni leaders had called for a boycott, appeared to be substantially lower.

Still, election officials said voting in the Sunni-dominated provinces had appeared to exceed initial expectations, and in some cases might reach 40 percent. In Mosul, a Sunni-majority city and the scene of heavy fighting in recent weeks, Western reporters saw voters in Sunni neighborhoods lined up outside polling stations.

It was unclear how the results would affect Sunni resentment, one of the most daunting challenges to Iraq's future.

In the Shiite-dominated cities of southern Iraq, and through much of Baghdad, Iraqis streamed to polling places, eager to give the country's largest group real political power for the first time. They did so despite relentless insurgent attacks that left 35 people dead, plus nine suicide bombers.

In some polling centers, the mood turned joyous, with Iraqis celebrating their newfound democratic freedoms in street parties that, until the elections, were virtually unknown in this war-ravaged land.

As the sun went down, some Iraqis ran to the polling centers. Some election workers kept polls open late for them.

Election officials here said that a more accurate picture of the turnout would be known later in the week, as the votes were counted, and that the election results themselves were probably several days away.

Voters chose from among 111 parties for members of provincial parliaments as well as a 275-member national assembly, which will be empowered to write the country's constitution. That is scheduled to be followed by a referendum on the constitution, followed by another round of elections in December.

One group of candidates that appeared to do well was the United Iraqi Alliance, a large coalition of Shiite parties brought together by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the country's powerful religious leader. One senior aide in that alliance said the party had been told by American and British officials that it appeared to have captured more than 50 percent of the vote.

The slate of candidates led by Ayad Allawi, the prime minister, also appeared to have done well.

At least for now, the large turnout appeared to vindicate the strategy to hold elections sooner rather than later, over the objections of many Sunni leaders and in the face of the ferocious insurgency. That strategy, advocated by Ayatollah Sistani and President Bush, drew criticism that it would further divide the country and that, in any case, the Iraqis were not ready.

In polling places throughout the country, ordinary Iraqis not only braved significant violence to go to the polls, but also demonstrated that they understood the stakes, and that they knew what to do.

"We feel now that we are human beings living in this country," Muhammad Abdul-Ridha, 25, a Najaf goldsmith, said after dropping his ballot into the box. "Now I feel I have a responsibility, I have a vote. Things will go right if people leave us alone to do what we want to do. If they leave the Iraqi people to decide for themselves, things will get better."

The mood among many Iraqi leaders, and those who set up the electoral infrastructure, was jubilant. Some said the success of the vote, in a nation so traumatized by tyranny and war, had put to rest any notion that the Iraqi people, or indeed the Arab world as a whole, were incapable of grasping their political destiny.

"We have established the principles upon which a democracy can be built," said Fareed Ayar, the spokesman for Iraq's electoral commission.

In many parts of the country, the turnout seemed to rebuke the violent campaign to sabotage the balloting and the threats by insurgents to kill Iraqis who voted.

With vehicular traffic banned and American and Iraqi forces imposing especially tight security, the attacks on Sunday were carried out in some cases by men wearing explosive vests who rushed polling centers and blew themselves up.

In the Shiite and Kurdish areas, the strategy clearly failed. In Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad, including Sadr City, many Iraqis cast their ballots to the sounds of exploding shells.

In some cases, the violence seemed to goad the Iraqis on. In the predominantly Shiite neighborhood of Khadamiya in northern Baghdad, where nearly 100 people were killed in a terror attacks last year, the turnout was said to approach 80 percent.

In the Sunni areas, the picture was mixed. With most Sunni leaders calling for a boycott and the insurgents vowing to kill voters, officials said they were expecting a low turnout in the three Iraqi provinces where the Sunnis are a majority.

For Iraqi and American officials, the prospect of a broad Sunni boycott has proved to be the most troubling aspect of the elections. The fear has been that a big turnout by Shiites and Kurds, coupled with a near-total Sunni boycott, could accelerate the feeling of alienation felt by Sunnis and set the stage here for civil war.

On the other hand, a substantial turnout in the Sunni areas would be regarded as a huge blow to the insurgents, who claim popular support but often rely on threats and violence to cow Sunnis.

The dire predictions appeared to be borne out in some areas of the Sunni Triangle, the area north and west of Baghdad where the insurgency burns with the greatest intensity. In the town of Baji in northern Iraq, election officials did not show up. In Ramadi, where Iraqi officials set up a pair of polling places just outside the city, a total of just 300 ballots were cast, many of them by police officers and soldiers.

But Iraqi and American officials, convinced that people in the Sunni areas would vote if they could, said there were signs that more voters than expected had turned out.

In the weeks leading up to the vote, election officials took several extraordinary measures to make voting easier in Sunni areas. They allowed voters in some of those areas to register on election day, and permitted voters to travel outside their neighborhoods to cast ballots. In some of the smaller villages around Ramadi, where many city residents were encouraged to vote, election workers reported that they had run out of ballots. In the refugee camps outside Falluja, set up after heavy fighting there in November, Iraqi officials reported steady voting.

"In Anbar, the number of votes were very good compared to our estimates," Mr. Ayar, the election commission spokesman, said of that province, without telling what those estimates were. "We did not expect a lot of turnout, but we found a lot of people standing in line in Anbar."

Adnan Pachachi, the former Iraqi foreign minister and one of the country's most prominent Sunni candidates, said his own reports suggested that participation by Sunnis might have reached as high as 40 percent. If that holds, he said, it would amount to a repudiation of the violent way.

"The insurgency has been exposed - they have no popular support of any kind," Mr. Pachachi said. "I think this election will weaken the insurgency."

But in Mosul, a Sunni-majority city and the country's third largest, the reports were mixed and contradictory. Some officials reported lines of voters stretching outside polling places in the city's Arab districts, with others saying the insurgents were managing to keep voters away.

In November, more than 4,000 police officers in Mosul fled their posts when they were attacked by insurgents, and earlier this month, the city's entire election commission resigned.

Yet for all of that, there were some signs that Sunnis in Mosul were turning out to vote. Western reporters returning from American military patrols in the city's Arab neighborhoods reported seeing lines of voters streaming into polling places.

Mr. Ayar said initial reports suggested that the turnout in Mosul appeared to mirror that in Anbar Province - that it was much was higher than expected.

Still, there were troubling signs that in some pockets of Mosul's Arab districts, the insurgents were successfully keeping voters away.

"Young gunmen are shooting from the streets and on the rooftops just to scare people away," said Khasro Goran, Mosul's deputy governor. "There is an imam who called from the mosque for people not to vote."

Even if the most optimistic projections for Sunni turnout are met, the biggest challenge likely to face the new government will be persuading the Sunnis to join the political mainstream.

On Sunday, some of Iraq's most prominent Shiite leaders said they were prepared to boost Sunni representation in the new government. They said they would also recruit a number of Sunni leaders to help draft the country's constitution.

In the days leading up the election, some Sunni leaders, including those believed to be close to the insurgents, have indicated a willingness to join in the effort.

"The Shiites will form of a majority, but there has to be a prominent presence of Sunnis in the government," said Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Iraq's national security adviser and a confidant of Ayatollah Sistani. "Now is the time for the Shiites to exercise statesmanship."

In many ways, the day belonged to Iraq's Shiites, the long-suppressed majority that suffered especially harsh treatment under Mr. Hussein. In Shiite cities across southern Iraq, the voters streamed forth, thrilling themselves and confounding their own predictions.

In Basra, the country's second-largest, predominantly Shiite city, one explosion after another echoed down the streets. Even so, as the day wore on, the number of voters swelled, and local officials began to appear to congratulate the Iraqis and themselves.

Abdul Sahib Al-Battat, the local elections chief, swept into the polling center at the Black Gold primary school, with a full entourage in tow. One by one, he inspected the voting stations with a military crispness.

Asked how the day had gone, Mr. Battat said in Arabic: "Bekhair. Gebeer. Bekhair. Shamel." Roughly translated: "Excellent. Big. Excellent. All of it."

Some Iraqis found in Sunday's election a victory that may ultimately loom larger than that of April 9, 2003, when Mr. Hussein's rule collapsed. The victory then was largely of American making, and one that, despite their relief that the tyrant was gone, many Iraqis felt they could never build on.

"The election was a victory of our own making," said Mr. Rubaie, the security adviser. "Today, the Iraqi people voted with their own blood."

Reporting for this article was contributed by John F. Burns from Baghdad, James Glanz from Basra, Edward Wong from Najaf, and Christine Hauser from Mosul.

I write this from a rundown house in the poorest slum in the Middle East. Until yesterday, my hosts and neighbors had for three decades been among the most repressed people on earth. Yet when I walk out the door, I see a city smothered in posters and banners from a hundred political parties. Like Afghanistan last year, the country has endorsed the right to vote in percentages that shame the electoral apathy of the rich world. Let nobody tell you that this election was anything but real. Iraq's Baathists and Wahhabis may continue to bark, but this caravan is moving on.

Gul warned Turkey could be forced to take action if ethnic turmoil erupts in Kirkuk


Turkey worried about Kurdish moves in Iraq

US seeks to allay Turkey's fears over Kurdish moves to take control of ethnically volatile Kirkuk.

ANKARA - A senior US official Monday sought to ease Turkey's concerns that Iraqi Kurds were plotting to take control of the ethnically volatile oil-rich city of Kirkuk in northern Iraq and make it the capital of a future independent Kurdish state.

Douglas Feith, the US undersecretary of defense for policy, told reporters here that Washington supports the unity of Iraq and that the settlement of the dispute over Kirkuk would not be left to a certain ethnic group.

"The issue of Kirkuk is an important one... It is going to be worked on by the Iraqis from the point of view that this is not a matter for one group or another but for the Iraqi people in general. We support that view," Feith said after talks with Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul.

Feith underlined that Washington "strongly believes that it is crucial that the territorial integrity of Iraq be preserved... and that problems like Kirkuk be solved in a way that reinforces the unity and territorial integrity of the country."

In a newspaper interview published Monday, Gul warned that Turkey could be forced to take action if ethnic turmoil erupts in Kirkuk, which also has a large population of Turkmens, a community of Turkish origin.

Tens of thousands of Kurds said to have been expelled from Kirkuk under the regime of Saddam Hussein have settled in the city following the US-led occupation of Iraq in March 2003 and were allowed to vote in Sunday's elections.

Ankara says many of the settlers have no bonds with Kirkuk and sees the influx as part of a design to incorporate the city into the Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq.

Critics here believe that the population shift is taking place with the tacit approval of the United States, which has the Kurds among its closest allies in Iraq.

Many Kurds want to see Kirkuk, which has some of the largest oil resources in the country, as the capital of an independent Kurdish state, a nightmare scenario for Turkey.

Ankara fears that independence-minded Kurdish moves in northern Iraq could spill over the border to southeast Turkey, which is home to its own sizeable Kurdish community.

In their meeting Monday, Feith told Gul that "the United States understands Turkey's worries and is shaping all its policies regarding Iraq taking into account Turkey's concerns," a senior Turkish diplomat said.

Gul, for his part, renewed Ankara's frustration over the United States' failure to act against Turkish Kurd rebels who have found refuge in the mountains of northern Iraq after a bloody 15-year campaign for self-rule in adjoining southeast Turkey, the diplomat said.

Part of the rebels, members of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which is considered a terrorist group both by Ankara and Washington, have reportedly infiltrated Turkey to engage in renewed violence since the group called off a five-year unilateral ceasefire with Ankara last June.

Feith and Gul also discussed the situation in Afghanistan, where Turkey next month will take over the command of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, the struggle against the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the two countries' cooperation within NATO.

Feith was to meet with the number two of the Turkish general staff, Ilker Basbug, later in the day and with the secretary-general of the National Security Council, Yigit Alpogan, before leaving Ankara on Wednesday.

Well, you seem to have great experiences as a foreign constitutional law scholar, ican!

Al-Jazeera airs plane wreckage video
(Filed: 31/01/2005)

The Arabic broadcaster al-Jazeera has aired video footage purporting to prove that the RAF Hercules that crashed north-west of Baghdad was shot down by Islamic militants.

The film shows a finger pressing a button and two missiles or rockets flying into the air before cutting to wreckage strewn across a field.

No impact with the plane is shown, but the images of people walking through wreckage reflect official statements saying that the plane broke up over a large area.

Al-Jazeera said the video had been sent to it by a group called the Green Brigade, which is part of the 1920 Revolution Brigades, a military wing of the National Islamic Resistance in Iraq.

The 1920 Revolution Brigades has previously claimed responsibility for attacks on coalition targets and kidnappings, but the Green Brigades has not been heard of before.

Al-Jazeera said the statement it received from the group claimed that 40 people died when the plane crashed near Balad yesterday. Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, has said 10 British personnel are feared dead.

The claims come after Ansar al-Islam, another Islamic group, said it had shot down the plane, although it provided no evidence.

great experiences" No, I merely have great audacity coupled with a very strong desire to participate here in a positive discussion, wherein we can explore what conditions need be established by Iraqis in Iraq to achieve in Iraq a secure democracy.

Quote:

Al-Jazeera airs plane wreckage video
(Filed: 31/01/2005)

The Arabic broadcaster al-Jazeera has aired video footage purporting to prove that the RAF Hercules that crashed north-west of Baghdad was shot down by Islamic militants.

The film shows a finger pressing a button and two missiles or rockets flying into the air before cutting to wreckage strewn across a field.

No impact with the plane is shown, but the images of people walking through wreckage reflect official statements saying that the plane broke up over a large area.

Al-Jazeera said the video had been sent to it by a group called the Green Brigade, which is part of the 1920 Revolution Brigades, a military wing of the National Islamic Resistance in Iraq.

The 1920 Revolution Brigades has previously claimed responsibility for attacks on coalition targets and kidnappings, but the Green Brigades has not been heard of before.

Al-Jazeera said the statement it received from the group claimed that 40 people died when the plane crashed near Balad yesterday. Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, has said 10 British personnel are feared dead.

The claims come after Ansar al-Islam, another Islamic group, said it had shot down the plane, although it provided no evidence.

Source

Quote:

great experiences" No, I merely have great audacity coupled with a very strong desire to participate here in a positive discussion, wherein we can explore what conditions need be established by Iraqis in Iraq to achieve in Iraq a secure democracy.

By Iraqis in Iraq - don't you think, they should give themselves a constitution, what the think, they need? Otherwise, why did they elect yesterday?