Suspected Taliban militants shot dead and burned a Turkish engineer in an area of western Afghanistan where two other foreigners were killed last week, a provincial governor said Monday. The gunmen stopped a vehicle carrying the engineer and three Afghan bodyguards on a remote highway in Farah province Sunday evening, the governor of neighbouring Nimroz told AFP.
"Armed Taliban in a station wagon stopped their vehicle, forced them out of the vehicle, disarmed his three bodyguards and shot the Turkish engineer," said governor Ghulam Dastageer Azad. "Later they poured fuel over his body and burned him."
Hummmm, isn't that un-islamic? Or is it un-islamic only when Americans do it?
The bodyguards were freed although their weapons were stolen.
Two foreign nationals were killed in the area on Tuesday last week when a remote-controlled bomb hit their vehicle. Three Afghans were also killed.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/03/2006 02:52 ||
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Hummmm, isn't that un-islamic? Or is it un-islamic only when Americans do it?
When a jihadi burns a body is is called preparing meat for dinner 'cause the goat or sheep is more useful alive.
A Taliban rebel posing as a traveler shot dead four policemen at a remote checkpoint in southern Afghanistan after eating dinner with them and sleeping in their quarters, officials said Sunday. A fifth officer shot the rebel dead.
I hope he gut shot the bastard...
The assailant asked the officers if he could spend the night with them late Friday because he was walking alone along a stretch of road in Helmand province, a hotbed of insurgency and the country's main poppy growing region, said Helmand provincial administrator Ghulam Muhiddin. After the officers had gone to sleep, the man grabbed one of their rifles and opened fire, killing the four instantly, before the fifth officer woke up and shot him dead, Muhiddin said. A Taliban spokesman, Qari Mohammed Yousaf, telephoned The Associated Press to claim responsibility.
Also in Helmand, rebels attacked a convoy of civilian trucks Saturday that had just dropped off equipment at a U.S.-led coalition base in the region, said Amanullah, a local police chief who uses only one name. The militants burned the trucks but freed the drivers unhurt.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/03/2006 00:00 ||
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Khartoum, 3 April (AKI) - The Sudanese government on Monday prevented the United Nations' top humanitarian official from visiting Sudan's ethnically troubled Darfur region. Jan Egeland said in an interview with the BBC he thought the government did not want him to see the latest wave of "ethnic cleansing" against black Africans in South Darfur. He said thousands of people had fled after 60 villages were attacked by pro-government Janjaweed militias.
The BBC cited a Sudanese foreign ministry spokesman, Jamal Ibrahim, saying that the government had asked Egeland to delay his visit because it coincided with a holiday to mark the birthday of the Muslim Prophet Mohammed. He said that in the light of the Danish cartoons row, it would not be sensitive or safe for a Norwegian such as Egeland to visit.
Egeland said the Sudanese government, guerrilla forces and ethnic militia groups were all to blame for the current instability in Darfur where he had been scheduled to meet local people and aid workers assisting civilians who have been displaced by he conflict.
Posted by: Steve ||
04/03/2006 10:22 ||
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Missing from the story: Did Mr. Egeland say "Oh. Okay" and go home?
#2
Speaking of the Profit,two weekends ago I saw a big group of (Shia, I think, but not entirely sure) Muslims commemorating his death...in Lafayette Sq. Park across from the White House. Lots of chanting and this tall creepy black sail contraption that they furled and unfurled. The (mostly black clad) wimminz and the men mixed freely, and there were no protest/demonstration type signs. I saw a very few gleaming white turbans on the elders. I was there near the end, a few of the group was relaxing with Popeye's fried chicken on the benches nearby.
Instructing magistrate at the court of Sidi M'hamed, Algiers, has ordered journalist of El Khabar Mourad M'hamed to be placed under judicial control. He is accused of "publication of information likely to harm national interest".
Mourad M'hamed was heard by the prosecuting attorney before he appeared in front of the instructing magistrate yesterday morning.
Mourad M'hamed left the court along with with the editor of El Khabar, M. Ali Djerri, and the newspaper's lawyer Khaled Bourayou at 6:00 p.m., after the instructing magistrate ordered the provisional detention the two policemen, indicted in the same case, and the journalist's friend, accused of contributing the information in question.
Mourad M'hamed has already been held, for long hours, at Algiers Central police station to force him to reveal the sources of his information published in El Khabar daily, concerning the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) which called on the terrorists released within the framework of national reconciliation, to join the organization.
The journalist's appearance before the prosecuting attorney took place without the defendant's lawyer.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/03/2006 03:23 ||
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Dubai, 3 April (AKI) - The reported leader of the Baluchistan Liberation Army (BLA), Ghazain Marri, was arrested last month in Dubai, on the request of the Pakistani government. The BLA is a separatist group fighting for the independence of the south-western Pakistani province of Baluchistan. According to a report on the Dubai-based daily Gulf News, an unnamed UAE official confirmed that Ghazain was detained on 22 March "as a criminal wanted by his country," and that the request for his arrest was made through official channels.
The report also stated that Ghazain remains in custody in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), while the attorney-general examines the documents submitted by the Pakistani authorities with their the extradition request. Pakistan and the UAE have agreement for the extradition of criminals and the exchange of information. The official quoted on Gulf News said that Ghazain is wanted in Pakistan "on murder and terrorism charges".
Posted by: Steve ||
04/03/2006 10:19 ||
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Like the German Shepherd in the old veterinarian joke, Ghazain's just getting his nails clipped.
One of 23 Al Qaeda convicts who escaped from a Yemeni prison in February has surrendered, a news agency reported Sunday.
Hazam Saleh Majali turned himself in to authorities within the past two days, according to Yemen's official Saba news agency.
The Yemeni was convicted of having a role in the 2002 attack on the French tanker Limburg and sentenced to death.
Majli was the sixth from the group of 23 to have surrendered, the agency said.
The prisoners broke out on Feb. 3 through a roughly 200-yard tunnel that ended inside a mosque. Among those at large is a militant convicted in the 2000 attack on the destroyer USS Cole in Aden's harbor.
Security officials said authorities were in indirect contact with the remaining fugitives and trying to persuade them to surrender.
The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media, said tribal leaders and Muslim clerics were the intermediaries. The officials did not provide further details.
Security officials said investigations into the prison break had found evidence that three people were bribed to facilitate the escape.
Authorities had offered a reward of $27,800 for information leading to the arrest of any of the fugitives.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/03/2006 02:49 ||
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"The Yemeni was convicted... and sentenced to death."
Why would anyone who is sentenced to swing turn themselves in? Is it safe to assume there is some Quid pro Quo action or just more Arabic logic that continues to elude me?
A regional leader of outlawed Purbo Banglar Communist Party (Janajuddho) was killed in an 'encounter' between members of Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) and his accomplices early yesterday at Bellabaria village under Baliakandi upazila of Rajbari district.
The outlaw, Nilu Molla, 31, was arrested on Saturday at his village Barhovellabari under the same upazila with a shutter gun and 13 bullets. Two more shutter guns and five bullets were also seized after the encounter that continued for 15 minutes, a press release of Khulna Rab said, adding that Nilu Molla was wanted in several murder, abduction, rape, extortion and bomb attack cases filed with different police stations of Rajbari district.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/03/2006 00:00 ||
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A total of three shutter guns? I guess they weren't kidding about expanding the RAB. They've even gotten the full TO&E.
Foreigners were involved in the Aug. 17 series of bombings in which two people were killed and over 200 injured, intelligence agencies said. The agencies have prepared a list of foreigners allegedly involved in the explosions. Most of the foreigners included in the list are from Pakistan and the Middle East. They include Maulana Nur Ahmed, Maulana Yasin, Hafiz Monir Hossain, Touhid Wahab, Mehbub Nur, Joynuddin Khan, Ahmed Abdullah, Ahmed Shah ibn Sharif, and Shah Nur-e-Islam. Intelligence sources claimed that six of the foreigners were certainly involved in the bombings.
The foreigners had close ties with the banned outfit Jamatul Mujahedeen Bangladesh (JMB), sources said. The intelligence agencies are collecting more information about the foreigners. Ruling out JMBs link with any international terror group, Inspector General of Police Abdul Quaiyum said the agencies had not been able to link JMB with any foreign terror group.
That's my feeling, too. I'd guess JMB is closer in spirit to the Wazir Taliban than to al-Qaeda. HUJI is the local al-Qaeda affiliate, and we seldom hear anything about them.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/03/2006 00:00 ||
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There are no "foreigners" among Muslims; that Ummah is the best of humanity. Yeah right.
Official sources announced this week that Sultan Geliskhanov, a former top Chechen representative, surrendered to law enforcement officials.
After Chechnya declared its independence in the early 1990s and became the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, Geliskhanov became head of the Department of State Security. So now his voluntary surrender, widely reported in the Russian media, is being presented as another victory for the federal forces.
It is obvious why the media focus on a man who left his job eleven years ago - since most ordinary Russians do not approve of the Chechen campaign, it is therefore necessary to show them that "we are really right."
As a result, among the list of "guerrilla leaders who surrendered" are two heads of special services of Ichkeria now. One of them is Ibragim Khultygov, who gave himself up at the beginning of the current military campaign and now works in the recently created Council of the Republic, the upper house of the Chechen parliament.
In addition there are also many security guards of the late Ichkerian President Aslan Maskhadov cooperating with the authorities, as well as the staff of various ministries, including former Ichkerian Defense Minister Magomed Khambiyev, who also became a deputy in the current parliament.
Apparently, there are many others waiting in the wings who, when necessary, will play the part of "surrendered guerrillas."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/03/2006 03:20 ||
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One of three men arrested on terrorism related charges on Friday has told the Melbourne Magistrates Court he was framed by the Australian Federal Police (AFP). Twenty-four-year-old Bassam Raad of Brunswick, 21-year-old Majer Raad of Coburg and 26-year-old Shoue Hammoud of Hadfield have been charged with belonging to a terrorist group and intentionally providing it with funding. They were arrested on Friday and appeared in court today.
The lawyer for two told the court his clients would not be applying for bail.
The other, Raad, said he would be representing himself and he had sacked his solicitors. Raad told the court he will eventually be found guilty because of his religion. When he entered the dock, he made a lewd hand gesture in the direction of AFP officers sitting in court.
Prosecutors alleged he is one of a group of men committed to carrying out a terrorist attack in Australia. Raad told the court he has been framed by the AFP and that in the legal system his Muslim faith will work against him. He was refused bail; all three men have been remanded in custody until a committal hearing in June.
#2
He also said that he was getting around in an unlicensed, unregistered $200 car, so how could he afford a machine gun?
A gift from Saudi Arabia, you know, Zak-ah perhaps!
#4
His Muslim faith will work against him? Is that cuz his Muslim faith teaches him to become a terrorist, I wonder?
Australia never should have let these types in, IMO. These guys are just playing on the Christian protocols that inform poltics and culture in the West: fairness, egalitarianism, tolerance -- foreign concepts to these foreigners.
ISTANBUL, Turkey (AP) - A group of men stopped a passenger bus and tossed gasoline bombs at it, sending the vehicle careening into pedestrians and killing three in Turkey's largest city on Sunday as pro-Kurdish riots continued to spread.
In the attack in Istanbul's Bagcilar district, the driver reversed his flaming vehicle onto a sidewalk after the bombing, running down a group of people nearby, police said. At least two of those killed were elderly women, and police said they suspected Kurdish militants were behind the attack.
Brilliant, officer, simply brilliant.
Television images showed the bus propped up on the sidewalk and engulfed in flames, which shot out of every broken window.
Private NTV television said men had gathered around after the attack and shouted slogans for an outlawed Kurdish separatist group that is considered a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union. If the Istanbul bus attack is proven to have been carried out by pro-Kurdish demonstrators, it would bring to 12 the total number of people killed in related violence in the past week.
I think the Kurds are a great people, but these mooks need some very direct action.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/03/2006 00:58 ||
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Turkish police have fired into the air to disperse a protest march in mainly-Kurdish southeast Turkey, killing one person. In Istanbul, three people were reported killed after a molotov cocktail was thrown at a bus. Security sources said additional troops were being deployed to Kiziltepe on Sunday, a town of about 100,000 people south of the region's main city of Diyarbakir.
In Ankara, parliament called a special session for Tuesday to discuss the violence. The southeast has suffered its worst riots in many years since Tuesday's funeral of 14 armed separatists killed in clashes with the army. Tensions reflect discontent over local conditions and resurgence of a Kurdish guerrilla campaign. Police said Mehmet Sidik Onder, 22, received a bullet wound to the stomach after police fired in the air to stop a march in Kiziltepe, near the Syrian border. The protesters were heading for the home of another man shot dead in the town on Saturday. Witnesses said the police fired at the man, the ninth to die in a wave of unrest that could stir serious strains in Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister's, ruling Justice and Development Party and stoke tensions with the influential military. Events are watched closely by the European Union that Turkey seeks to join.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/03/2006 00:00 ||
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PKK aren't your noble seekers of independence. They'll be just as vicious to any other Kurd that doesn't agree with them. They need to be taken out.
Agitated protesters went on the rampage in southeastern Turkey on Saturday in the fifth day of street battles with the security forces. Fresh clashes between protesters and police in Kýzýltepe, near the Syrian border, killed one protester and injured 10 others on Saturday, security sources said. The latest death brought the toll in this week's violence to eight dead. In Saturday's violence, demonstrators set fire to a branch of a major bank and a building used by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). There were also scuffles in Silopi, at the Iraqi border, where riot police stopped protesters from marching to the office of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), Anatolia said. A three-year-old boy died of gunshot wounds on Friday in Diyarbakir and local media said he was killed after police fired shots over the heads of protesters.
Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said children were being used as "pawns of terrorism" in unrest gripping the region and warned that security forces could not guarantee their safety.
The European Union, which Turkey aims to join, has expressed concern about the violence and urged Ankara to do more to combat poverty in the southeast and to boost Kurds' cultural rights. The U.S. government, meanwhile, alerted Americans to violence in southeastern Turkey that the State Department said potentially could spread to the country's main cities in the west.
#5
The other way around, A5089. Dead, he's a martyr. Alive, he's another Mook in the slammer. Let him die like Hess and Speer. He'll be just as threatening by then.
#14
They ought to raffle off the right to fire the bullet, push the button, turn the knob, or flip the switch that flushes this turd away. Bye bye Zac!
Posted by: They Call Me "Tim" ||
04/03/2006 20:08 Comments ||
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#16
Yahoo!!!It's Allaha's will! Despite out legal systems best efforts to free him, he's gonna hang!!!!
Posted by: 49 pan ||
04/03/2006 21:37 Comments ||
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#17
Fuck that 2-bit whore LOTP for using 3 of my posted articles today without attribution.
I gather material from 6 link sites that Whore#1 couldn't even dream of finding, you fucking skank. Any one who links with your 20 fuck-wad regulars' site will know what bags of shit you and your whore, Seafarious are.
Fuck your Father. Fuck your Mother. Fuck your Pimp. Fuck you bastard spawn. And Fuck you. And you are Fucked, you wild animal.
War On Terror, my ass; you are terrorists. Die soon you backwood's freaks. No more slumming.
WASHINGTON A divided Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal from Jose Padilla, held as an enemy combatant without traditional legal rights for more than three years, sidestepping a challenge to Bush administration wartime detention powers. Padilla was moved in January to Miami to face criminal charges, and the government argued that the appeal over his indefinite detention was now pointless.
Six justices refused to hear the case. Three justices said the court should have agreed to take up the case: Justices David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer. But three court members, including Chief Justice John Roberts, said that they would be watching to ensure Padilla receives the protections "guaranteed to all federal criminal defendants."
An appeals court panel had all but called for the high court to deal with the case, saying it was troubled by the Bush administration's change in legal strategy -- it brought criminal charges only after it looked like the Supreme Court was going to step in. Justices first considered in 2004 whether Padilla's constitutional rights were violated when he was detained as an enemy combatant without charges and access to a lawyer, traditional legal rights. Justices dodged a decision on technical grounds. In a dissent Justice John Paul Stevens said then that "at stake in this case is nothing less than the essence of a free society."
Justices are reviewing a second case arising from the government pursuit of terrorists, an appeal by a foreign terrorist suspect facing a military commission on war crimes charges at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Arguments were last week.
Padilla's case was different. It asked the court to clarify how far the government can go when its hunt for terrorists leads to Americans in this country. Based on the vote breakdown, it appears the court would have agreed to hear the appeal had Padilla not been charged.
"In light of the previous changes in his custody status and the fact that nearly four years have passed since he first was detained, Padilla, it must be acknowledged, has a continuing concern that his status might be altered again," Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for himself, Stevens and Roberts. "That concern, however, can be addressed if the necessity arises."
Posted by: Steve ||
04/03/2006 12:55 ||
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"sidestepping a challenge to Bush administration wartime detention powers." Ahem, maybe they didn't see anything wrong with those powers? I bet the LLL will just go nuts over this.
#2
They will. Listen to Nazi Public Radio tonight and hear it described as a significant defeat for the Bush administration because the court refused to submit to its contention that the case was moot. The judiciary plans to continue to watch closely over the executive in its abuse of habeus corpus. Blah blah blah.
#3
Funny, the leftie blogs are upset because they think the USSC ducked this one. It's not occurred to them, of course, that the Bush administration might actually be right, so they're fuming about the lack of 'courage' on the part of the USSC.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/03/2006 19:44 Comments ||
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You *did* wash before you came back to the 'Burg, right, Steve?
DOVER, Del. - A C-5 cargo plane with 17 people aboard crashed near the Dover Air Force Base Monday morning, according to a state public safety official.
There is no word on fatalities but Department of Public Safety assistant director Allen Metheny said some injuries have been reported. Some patients are being taken to a local hospital and others were being taken to a trauma center.
It's not clear if the plane was landing or taking off when it crashed around 6:45 a.m. The plane broke into three pieces, with the cockpit separated from the fuselage and a wing shattered. It wasn't immediately clear whether the plane was taking off or landing when it crashed. The C-5 is one of the Air Force's largest cargo planes and is designed to carry very heavy cargo loads on transcontinental deployments. More as it comes in, photo at Drudge Report. She lost her tail and nose came off just in front of wing. No fire, amazingly.
UPDATE: According to initial reports, it had just taken off and had some indications of a problem, said Col. Kate Haddock, spokeswoman at the Pentagon's Joint Chiefs of Staff. It turned back to land and fell short of the runway, she said. Maj. Ange Keskey of the Air Mobility Command at Scott Air Force Base in Illinois confirmed 17 people were aboard and said the crash is being investigated.
Additional: Pentagon sources told CNN the aircraft "declared an in-flight emergency for a No. 2 engine flameout." The C-5 jet, assigned to the 436th Air Wing at Dover AFB, was being operated by an Air National Guard unit, officials told CNN.
The C-5 Galaxy, the largest aircraft in the U.S. military inventory, came down short of the runway at Dover about 6:30 a.m., the officials said. The Federal Aviation Administration said the plane had taken off from Dover and crashed while attempting to return.
Allen Metheny, assistant director in the Delaware Department of Public Safety, said some people were taken to hospitals with injuries, according to The Associated Press. Television images showed the plane had broken into at least three pieces, with the cockpit separated at a right angle from the rest of the fuselage. The broken-off tail assembly was several hundred yards away, AP reported.
Posted by: Steve ||
04/03/2006 08:30 ||
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No fire, amazingly.
Probably landing then, it would be full of fuel on takeoff, landing it's near empty.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
04/03/2006 10:58 Comments ||
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Also heard that all are alive! I was always amazed when I watched one of them fly.
#3
it would be full of fuel on takeoff, landing it's near empty.
C-5s often take off with minimum fuel load, meeting a tanker soon after. Easier to lift that big bird full of cargo off with lighter fuel load.
Posted by: Steve ||
04/03/2006 12:28 Comments ||
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Loss of engine on takeoff is purty bad but evidently they got altitude and setup for landing, on 3 which shouldn't have been so hard, bet it was more than a single engine failure.
#5
DOVER, Del. A huge military cargo plane crashed shortly after takeoff at Dover Air Force Base on Monday, breaking apart in a belly flop that drenched some of the 17 people aboard with fuel but caused no fire or life-threatening injuries. Its a miracle. Its absolutely a miracle, said Lt. Col. Mark Ruse, commander of Dovers 436th Air Wing Civil Engineering squadron.
Military officials said the C-5 Galaxy, the militarys largest plane at more than six stories high and 247 feet long, developed problems soon after taking off for Spain about 6:30 a.m. It crashed just short of the runway while attempting to return to the base and broke in two behind the cockpit. The tail assembly landed several hundred yards away, and an engine was thrown forward by the impact. It looks like it kind of slid along the ground almost like a water landing of sorts, Ruse said.
Fourteen of the injured, taken to a Dover hospital, were covered with jet fuel and had to be decontaminated in the parking lot, but officials said none of their injuries was considered life threatening. Three others were taken to Christiana Care in Newark, said hospital spokeswoman Sharon Justice. The hospital would not release further information, but the military said none of the crash survivors lives was in danger.
The C-5 was being flown by a reserve crew from the 512th Airlift Wing, said Capt. John Sheets of the Air Mobility Command at Scott Air Force Base in Illinois. All flights from the base were suspended as emergency crews, some in hazardous materials suits, combed through the wreckage in a light rain under overcast skies. Some sprayed foam on the left wing, which had lost its engine, while others removed the remaining fuel from the plane.
Posted by: Steve ||
04/03/2006 16:29 Comments ||
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There's got to be more than a one-engine flameout. Go through the emergency checklest. Set up for a landing.
We had an E3-B AWACS crash at Elmendorf AFB on Sept 22, 1995. Killed all the crew. The #1 engine ingested some birds, blew up, pieces took out #2 engine. She was full of fuel and rolled over on her left wing and became a smoking hole.
It was right near the highway. That black smoke was an awful sight.
These people in the C-5A were very very lucky.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
04/03/2006 16:41 Comments ||
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The pictures resembled those of a B-52H that crashed at Wright Patt in 1974. The BUFF had lost hydraulics and had neither rudder nor elevator control. The pilots controlled it by the engines, up and down by varying power settings and left and right by differential thrust. After flying around for 8 hours to burn off fuel to get to landing weight, the plane was attempting to land when it suddenly pitched nose down into the runway. The nose broke off and rolled off the runway. The engine cables sheared and put all 8 engines to max power. The remainder of the plane went straight up, did a wingover and impacted 500 yards down the runway in a fireball. It was almost 30 minutes before anyone noticed the nose off to the side of the runway. All 7 crew (6 + 1 IP) were alive, but hanging upside down in their seats. Only the pilot in the IP seat was hurt(a compression fracture). Pilot in Command, Major Charlie Brown.
Saima Sulaiman knew just where to take her father for his diabetes - the hospital run by Jamaat ul Dawa, known for its short lines and free service, part of the group's highly praised relief efforts after last October's devastating earthquake.
She also knew just who makes up the group.
"These are the Islamic fighters," she said simply.
Islamic groups such as Jamaat ul Dawa showed up to help earthquake victims within hours of the Oct. 8 temblor, even before the Pakistani army arrived. They dug out bodies, handed out food and passed out blankets. The country's interior minister called the groups "the lifeline of our rescue and relief work." International aid agencies praised their quick response and cooperation.
But critics charge that at least two of the groups - Jamaat ul Dawa and the Al Rasheed Trust - are linked to terrorism. Critics say the Pakistani government is legitimizing Islamic militants by allowing them to perform relief work and giving them a new toehold in Kashmir.
The issue goes to the core of the main charge made against Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf: that he is not tough enough on extremist groups, also called "jihadi" groups, in reference to holy war.
Some experts believe that Musharraf cannot push militants too hard or he will face a backlash from a hostile public.
Others believe Musharraf and the Pakistani army coddle militants while pretending to crack down on them, especially in Kashmir, the Himalayan territory that India and Pakistan have fought over for almost 50 years. After the government banned several groups in early 2002, most changed their names and continued operating. Despite calls for the reform of madrassas, the Islamic boarding schools, little has changed.
In March, the International Crisis Group released a policy brief asking Pakistan to prevent extremist groups, including those operating under new names, from participating in further earthquake relief and reconstruction work.
"The jihadis are going to gain in every possible way from the earthquake," said Samina Ahmed, South Asia project director for the International Crisis Group, a non-profit agency specializing in conflict resolution. "With the support of Pakistan, they have managed to gain themselves a whole new recruiting ground. They are seen as the saviors. What easier way to spread their message and gain recruits?"
Jamaat ul Dawa is considered to be the fundraising front for Lashkar-e-Taiba, the militant group fighting Indian troops in disputed Kashmir and blamed for most major terrorist attacks in India. Some of Lashkar-e-Taiba's top leaders have been linked to al-Qaida, and several followers have been picked up in Iraq.
In 2002, Pakistan banned Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is also designated a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department. The man who founded Lashkar-e-Taiba formed Jamaat ul Dawa although leaders say there is no connection between the groups. Efforts to place Jamaat ul Dawa on international terrorist group lists slowed after the earthquake, largely because of the group's relief work.
Attacks by militants crossing the line of control into the Indian side of Kashmir have decreased since the earthquake. But two major terrorist attacks elsewhere in India since October have been blamed on Lashkar-e-Taiba.
Al Rasheed Trust is associated with Jaish-e-Muhammad, a militant group also banned by Pakistan in 2002, according to the International Crisis Group. The U.S. government froze Al Rasheed's U.S. assets in 2003 on allegations of sending money to al-Qaida.
Both Jamaat ul Dawa and Al Rasheed are on Pakistan's terrorism watch list, but neither has been banned.
In Kashmir, government officials praised the groups' relief work.
Sikandar Hayat Khan, the prime minister of the Pakistan side of Kashmir, said the groups have been serving humanity.
"They did their best," Khan said. "What Islam teaches us and what they are doing here, I think the two are the same."
He said he did not believe Jamaat ul Dawa was a militant group. He said the government was "watching" Al Rasheed.
"If they do something against here or the world community, we will not allow it," he said.
Even Western diplomats praised relief work by the militants.
"The only organized force I saw up there was the jihadi groups," said a Western embassy worker who visited two days after the quake.
"We provide people all basic amenities at the hospital and the camp, but we can't give them luxuries," said Dr. Ahmad Ammad at Jamaat ul Dawa hospital in Muzaffarabad. "We give them food and clothes. Other things, we don't like to provide, like TVs or radios. It's better for people to remember God than watch TV."
Khalid Usman, in charge of logistics for Al Rasheed in Muzaffarabad, said the trust was a humanitarian agency, not a militant group.
"We have no political agenda," Usman said. "We have no affiliation with any political or jihadi organization. We try to help deprived people."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/03/2006 03:19 ||
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Pakistan's military operations on the front line of the US-led war on terror have led to a further "Talibanisation" of the border tribal regions that is now spreading to areas traditionally under government control.
Pakistan's military operations on the front line of the US-led war on terror have led to a further "Talibanisation" of the border tribal regions that is now spreading to areas traditionally under government control.
In 2003 an 80,000-strong Pakistan force was deployed to flush out forces loyal to the Taliban and al-Qa'eda.
But three years after Pakistani soldiers first entered the tribal area of South Waziristan many politicians from the tribal area, media commentators and retired officers are united in the view that the operation has produced few positive results.
Instead, there is a steadily encroaching Taliban-style influence. Shopkeepers have been told not to sell music or films, barbers are instructed not to shave beards, and women have been told not to go to the market. More than 100 pro-government elders and politicians have been killed in the past nine months.
"They create an environment of fear, pretend they are in charge. We can't let those Taliban impose what they want," said Sikander Qayyum, the Peshawar-based security chief for the tribal zones.
Since last year, when a shaky agreement was signed between the army and militants in South Waziristan, an uneasy peace has prevailed.
The local administration has to negotiate the daily running of the area with an alliance of mainly anti-government tribal elders and pro-Taliban clerics. The effect is a clear rise in Taliban influence.
Yesterday a local militant, Asmatullah Shaheen, announced via loudspeaker in the Jandol area of South Waziristan that people were not to shave. In Barmal village, Mufti Fazal-ur-Rehamn Fazli circulated a pamphlet stating that Jews and Christians were encouraging Muslims to take anti-polio drops in a conspiracy to make Muslim populations infertile.
Reports have spread around Pakistan that an Islamic court has been established in Wana, South Waziristan's capital, replacing the traditional council of elders.
Last week Pakistani press reports said that a man had been sentenced to death according to sharia law, although local officials insist it is traditional tribal law.
The problem facing the Pakistan government is underlined by Senator Mohammed Salah Qureshi, a cleric from South Waziristan. "The clerics here have thousands of followers and they are following jihad against the US and the world," he said. Negotiations with tribesmen over handing over foreign al-Qa'eda fugitives have not borne much fruit, other than stoking anti-government and anti-US sentiment.
The fall-out of the campaign is now being felt further afield. Similar Taliban-style edicts to those issued in Waziristan are beginning to be heard in Tank and Dera Ismail Khan.
In these neighbouring "settled areas" of the North-West Frontier Province, police have issued a statement warning local officials that militants who had been driven out of Waziristan by military operations were possibly taking refuge among locals.
Last week a remote-controlled bomb ripped through a police vehicle in Dera Ismail Khan killing seven people. Television sets and cassettes have been burned and internet cafes destroyed.
The province is governed by the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, which came to power on an anti-US platform in the October 2002 general elections and has promoted Taliban-style policy.
"It is seepage from the war on terror," said one Dera Ismail Khan official. "The army action has undermined local political influence. So now there is chaos."
Suspected Islamic militants killed a cleric in Sararogha, South Waziristan, over suspicion that he was a spy for the US and Britain, officials said yesterday.
The bullet-riddled body of Maulana Zahir Shah, who ran an Islamic school, was found yesterday, three days after five armed men abducted him. He helped authorities run a radio station that aired programs critical of the militants from his school, an intelligence official said.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/03/2006 03:12 ||
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Ten people including five tribal police were killed and 13 injured in separate bomb blasts in Balochistan on Sunday, officials said. Three civilians a man, a woman and a young girl were killed and seven injured in two back-to-back bomb explosions at a state-run farm in the town of Kohlu, 300 kilometres east of Quetta, a security official told AFP.P. The official had earlier said that two paramilitary soldiers were killed in the blast. Initial reports had indicated that two paramilitary soldiers were killed, but later the dead were identified as three civilians, the official said, on condition of anonymity. He blamed the attack on tribal militants. The three civilians worked at the farm.
Five tribal policemen and a private security official guarding an oil and gas exploration site of Pakistan Petroleum Limited were killed and four injured in a landmine explosion in the desert region of Sunny in Bolan district, tribal police official major Mohammed Anjum told AFP. Two of the policemen were killed and eight injured in a firefight following the explosion. The fighting is still on, a security official told Reuters in condition of anonymity.
A tractor driver was killed and two others injured in Jafferabad district when a tractor-trailer hit a landmine on Sunday, police official Khalid Magsi said.
Paramilitary forces also on Sunday defused a remote-controlled bomb planted on a main railway line near Mach station a couple of hours before two passenger trains were to pass the spot, a paramilitary commander said. Tribal chieftains say they are fighting for more political rights and a greater share of profits from the regions natural resources. The Frontier Corp seized 35 shells in a raid in the Patokh area of Dera Bugti district.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/03/2006 00:00 ||
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The government might relax some restrictions on banned militant organisation Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan and allow it to commence political activities in a very low profile under the name Millat-e-Islamia Pakistan, sources told Daily Times.
That's a good candidate for Worst Idea of the Week.
Sources said the decision was made after a recent meeting involving officials from law enforcement agencies, the National Crisis Management Cell and the Sipah. Officials have placed two major conditions on the Sipah to resume even low-key political activities, they said. The government has stressed that the Sipahs leaders cannot incite sectarian violence in any way nor abuse any person in a public meeting, they added. Authorities decided to relax some restrictions on the Sipah after these assurances and allow it to restart political activities under the umbrella of Millat-e-Islamia Pakistan.
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04/03/2006 00:00 ||
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An exchange of rocket fire between Pakistani troops and pro-Taliban fighters near the Afghan border has killed one soldier and wounded 10 people, including three children, officials and residents say.
Eight fluffy bunnies were seriously wounded. No word yet on puppy, kitten, or baby duck casualties.
The fighters opened fire on Saturday night, targeting a fort in the Dattakhel area, west of Miranshah, the main town in the North Waziristan semi-autonomous tribal region.
Major-General Shaukat Sultan, the very model of a modern major general a military spokesman, said one soldier was killed and four wounded in the attack on the fort. Residents said three children were wounded in a subsequent exchange of fire, but it was unclear which side had fired the rocket that hit their house. It was also unknown whether the attackers suffered any casualties as they fled in the darkness. In a separate rocket attack in the Shawal area of North Waziristan, the fighters wounded three paramilitary men.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/03/2006 00:00 ||
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Every day a couple of bombs go off somewhere in Balochistan destroying a bridge, a culvert, a railway track, an electricity tower or a gas pipeline. The insurgents have become so audacious that even the chief ministers house isnt safe from mortar attacks anymore. Every day army convoys and outposts in Waziristan are attacked and the death toll of soldiers and local collaborators is rising. Even the interior minister has conceded that Al-Qaeda/Taliban have spread trouble in the neighbouring districts of Bannu, Dera Ismail Khan and Tank. So whats the Musharraf regime doing about this?
Its strategy in Balochistan is simplistic. Since the insurgents dont have a visible face or front, and since the Balochistan puppet provincial parliament isnt too pushed about the issues of rights raised by the insurgents, there is no one with whom the federal government can negotiate the problem. Meanwhile, Sardar Ataullah Mengal is always ready to denounce the army action in Balochistan but refuses to act as a spokesman of the Baloch Liberation Army, or whatever. Nawab Khair Bux Marri is 80+ and still as silent and intransigent as ever. And Nawab Akbar Bugti, the trade unionist from Dera Bugti, is languishing in his secret cave hideout and giving interviews to foreigners reclaiming his rights as a Baloch nationalist after having spent the last thirty five years slamming Messrs Mengal and Marri. Under the circumstances, the federal government, governor, corps commander and IG-FC have jointly determined to run the show with the advice of Military Intelligence. This is based on trying to win hearts and minds with development projects and promising employment prospects (30,000 new jobs will come online, says the prime minister) and propping up political and tribal opponents of the three rebellious sardars and nawabs (thousands of Kalpar Bugtis ousted by Akbar Bugti from their homelands years ago have been encouraged to return, dig their heels in and lend a helping hand against the insurgents).
In Waziristan, too, steps are being taken to reclaim the initiative. Along with resolute military action, the government is developing plans to buy off and disarm the rebels. The US has pledged money for suitable development projects so that strong pro-government vested interests are created. At the same time, the government intends to call a grand jirga in the tribal areas consisting of elders, clerics, local councilors and government officials and entrust it with the job of identifying anti-state elements and persuading rebellious tribesmen not to shelter foreign militants.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
04/03/2006 00:00 ||
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#2
Let it break up. The Urdu language was supposed to unite the different nationalities. Only 8% claim to speak that useless language. Pakistan is: Punjab province and its occupied and oppressed territories.
It all started last Monday. Supporters of Mufti Shakir, a cleric, tried to knock down a house that belonged to a supporter of his rival Afghan cleric Pir Saifullah Rehman. The fighting led to the killing of five people, most of them supporters of Shakir, whose group calls itself Lashkar-e-Islamia. This prompted the supporters of Shakir to attack the house of another Rehman supporter, Badshah Gul, on Tuesday, killing 19 people, including 16 Afghans.
This is not a scenario from some film but a violent reality that has been simmering in the area for more than a year. While the government claims to have extended its writ to much of the tribal area, the two rivals clerics defied its authority right in the Khyber Agency, merely a few kilometers away from the provincial capital, Peshawar.
Trouble began with two lethal radio stations, one run by Mufti Munir Shakirs Lashkar-e-Islami and the other by Pir Saifur Rehman, an Afghan cleric based in the Soordand area of the Bara Tehsil of Khyber Agency. Both clerics defied the government writ and continued to spit venom against each other through their illegal radio broadcasts. They continued to mock both the administration and the tribal jirga after they were told to shut down their radio stations. In February, this year, the tribal jirga had also ordered Pir Saifur Rehman, a non-local to leave the area to ease the tensions but the move did not really help since Saifur Rehman returned shortly. In his absence, his supporters kept the rivalry aflame through their radio station.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
04/03/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
Kill both of them.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
04/03/2006 12:50 Comments ||
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How I robbed the railways!
Reported in the Jang, constable Nawaz confessed that he looted the railways treasury in Lahore while he was its guard and ran away with Rs 3 crore 61 lakh but was caught when he kept ringing up his colleagues in Lahore to find out if he was being investigated. He said he was an army soldier but got into the police after leaving the army. He kept trying to get posted to the treasury and finally got the job even though he had bad reports. Then he got three accomplices including one fellow constable to drug the guard and cut the safe open. He thereafter offended his accomplices by giving them a mere Rs 15,000 each and bought a bungalow in Bahawalpur for Rs 28 lakh, and got a new face and hair through plastic surgery. In all Rs 3 crore 25 lakh were found on him after he was caught through entrapment.
Lahore birds too protested against Denmark
According to the daily Pakistan, birds stopped coming to eat grain at Istanbul Chowk in Lahore on the great March 3 Protest Day against insult to the Prophet (pbuh). Birds are known to do ibadat and praise the Prophet (pbuh) but when the birds realised that Lahore was protesting they too absented themselves from the two special places where grain was kept for them.
Be kind to us, master!
Columnist Irfan Siddiqi wrote in the Nawa-e-Waqt that his request to Bush was that he should not insult us in front of others. Indoors (andar-khanay) he could treat us as roughly as he wished but in public he should pat us on the back so that our habit of slavery (khu-e-ghulam) and natural inclination to worship (fitrat-e-bandagi) could be satisfied. Whenever Bush passes through the region to do a big deal with some state or visit one of his colonies he should also call on us so that we can show off (thoon-tthan) too.
Bush cornered Pakistan
Reported in Khabrain, ex-ISI chief Hameed Gul said that President Bushs March tour of India had pushed Pakistan into a corner while making India into a regional hegemon. He said Pakistan was put under pressure to vote against Iran at the IAEA and to get rid of its nuclear programme. In these circumstances Pakistans friendship with China had become more crucial and the Mekran Coast had become strategic. He said Manmohans remark about a failed state was important. To get Pakistan to do its bidding, the US may get Pakistan to hold elections in 2006.
Another False prophet appears in Bhai Pheru
According to the Nawa-e-Waqt a new prophet after Imam Mehdi made his appearance in Bhai Pheru near Lahore when Abdul Hamid declared that he was sent by God. He soon set up a Kaaba and started doing hajj around it while introducing his own name into the kalima. He also started doing his tabligh in the area. The people of Bhai Pheru became greatly incensed and attacked him before the police took him and locked him up. The people then stood outside the jail and wanted him to be handed over. Then the people started breaking public property to express their love for Islam, after which the police threw teargas shells at them. This caused bhagdaur (stampede) and people gathered to do some sincere property damage were greatly offended with the police. The following day the city of Qasur remained closed due to hartal by the shopkeepers and more police force was called from surrounding districts in anticipation of widespread vandalism on the part of the pious Muslims. The false prophet was taken to Lahore in a cavalcade of six cars.
Imran bigger leader than Fazl and Qazi
That's hard to pictue, frankly...
Quoted in the daily Pakistan, secretary general PML Mushahid Hussain Syed said that by deciding to hold a protest rally on the visit of President Bush Imran Khan had increased his status, and by not attending his rally, the MMA had allowed its leaders Qazi Hussain Ahmed and Maulana Fazlur Rehman to become smaller leaders than Imran Khan. He said Imran Khan was confined because of his own security; he was no threat to the PML government.
America turned Junejos head
Historian Dr Safdar Mehmood wrote in Jang that no Pakistani ruler was legitimate unless he travelled to the United States and took a certificate from Washington. Like all rulers Muhammad Khan Junejo after becoming prime minister of Pakistan in 1985 insisted that he must visit Washington. He finally went and got his certificate of legitimacy from the US. But such visits also turned the rulers head. General Zia expressed his fear publicly when he said that Junejos head had been turned by Washington. Predictably, Junejo rebelled and Zia removed him.
Plotocracy instead of plutocracy
Writing in Nawa-e-Waqt Ghiasuddin Janbaz stated that Pakistans bureaucracy was deeply involved in the practice of plotocracy (allotting of plots of land) and notocracy (making of currency notes), while the politicians were busy practising lotocracy (becoming lota to change political loyalties) to accumulate more wealth.
Shahid Afridi and Tablighi Jamaat
Sarerahe wrote in Nawa-e-Waqt that the Tablighi Jamaat had been praying to capture Pakistans top cricketer Shahid Afridi to join its preaching team and this prayer was finally heard. Shahid Afridi had actually led a Tablighi Jamaat preaching team to Umar Kot in Sindh. Sarerahe said that now each sixer hit by Afridi would be an Islamic sixer. All cricketers had already become members of the Jamaat, now only Afridi was left. The prayer had been heard.
Naji and Qaji
Jamaat Islami leader Amirul Azim questioned columnist Nazeer Najis probity in selecting Qazi Hussain Ahmed and the MMA for criticism in the context of 14 February destruction of property in Lahore while protesting Danish cartoons. Naji first hinted that the religious leaders could be behind the vandalism in Lahore, then tried to create a rift between Qazi Hussain and Maulana Fazlur Rehman, the two leaders of the MMA. Finally, Naji wrote that now the world had stopped protesting the cartoons, why was protest going on in Pakistan? The truth was that the cartoon controversy was simply the outer excuse; the real protest was propelled by other conditions in Pakistan which were unacceptable to the masses.
Fateh Muhammad and Kissinger and Enlightenment
Columnist Masud Ashar wrote in Jang that famous Pakistani intellectual Fateh Muhammad Malik spoke at a seminar at GC University in Lahore and warned the audience that the idea of enlightenment in Pakistan was nothing but a revival of a strategy followed by Henry Kissinger. Prof Mazur Ahmad said that Pakistan needed an intellectual paradigm shift to cope with the modern world.
Kasuri and Condy Rices leg
Columnist Abbas Athar wrote in Nawa-e-Waqt that a photograph issued during President Bushs visit to Pakistan showed foreign minister Khursheed Mahmud Kasuri talking to his American counterpart Ms Condoleeza Rice. Mr Kasuri was earnestly trying to make a point probably telling her that Pakistan was making all-out efforts against terrorism but he seemed actually to be talking to her leg which she had extended by putting it on her other leg.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/03/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
"Then the people started breaking public property to express their love for Islam"
"Pakistan needed an intellectual paradigm shift to cope with the modern world."
Not so much nuggetts as gems.
#4
but he seemed actually to be talking to her leg which she had extended by putting it on her other leg.
I'm surprised there wasn't serious celebratory firing of the AKs.
#7
the real protest was propelled by other conditions in Pakistan which were unacceptable to the masses.
Qazi's crap-for-brains illbreds torched school buses and a couple of KFCs. The "masses" have worse enemies (like Qazi). Maybe there is a silent Pak majority that would like to swing their cleric class from lampposts.
Iraq's dominant Shiite political bloc fractured Sunday when its most powerful faction publicly demanded that the incumbent Shiite prime minister resign over his inability to form a unified government. The split came as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Jack Straw, the British foreign minister, paid an urgent visit to Iraqi leaders here to convey in the most forceful terms yet that their patience for the country's political paralysis was wearing thin.
It was not clear whether the joint visit by Ms. Rice and Mr. Straw, the top emissaries of the two countries that led the invasion of Iraq three years ago, played a direct role in the splintering of the Shiite bloc, and whether that schism would lead to forward movement on forming a new government, which has been stalled for months.
The developments suggested that a new phase in Iraq's convulsions might have started by opening a possibly violent battle for the country's top job between rival Shiite factions, which both have militias backing them. The incumbent prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, has said he will fight to keep his job, and his principal supporter is Moktada al-Sadr, a rebellious cleric whose Mahdi Army militia has resorted to violence many times to enforce his wishes.
Ms. Rice and Mr. Straw, who came here unannounced in a driving rainstorm from a meeting in England punctuated by antiwar protests, told reporters they did not want to intervene in the dispute over the prime minister. But at the same time they pointed out that Mr. Jaafari had been unable to win enough political support to form a government since his nomination on Feb. 12.
"They've got to get a prime minister who can actually form the government," Ms. Rice said after a meetings with Iraqi leaders which included a visibly uncomfortable photo session with Mr. Jaafari inside the Green Zone, the fortified part of Baghdad that houses the Iraqi government and American Embassy. She added, "I told them that a lot of treasure, a lot of human treasure, has been put on the line to give Iraq the chance to have a democratic future."
Neither Ms. Rice nor Mr. Straw would specify whether they had applied even tougher pressure on the Iraqi leaders. But Ms. Rice's references to the loss of lives more than 2,300 American soldiers alone have died here since the March 2003 invasion and the many billions of dollars spent clearly reflected the growing impatience in Washington and London for more progress.
The fracturing of the Shiites became clear in the late afternoon, as a senior official in the leading Shiite party, Sheik Jalaladeen al-Sagheir, said in a telephone interview that his party was putting forward another candidate to replace Mr. Jaafari. "I've asked Jaafari to resign from his job," said Sheik Sagheir, a deputy to the Shiite bloc's leader, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim. "The prime minister should have national consensus inside the Parliament, and he should have the support of the international body."
Any dispute between the Shiite bloc's two biggest factions Mr. Hakim's party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, and the party led by Mr. Sadr carries with it the possibility of armed violence. The factions are longtime rivals, have backing from Iran and operate militias with members in the Iraqi security forces. Their militias fought street battles last August throughout Baghdad and the south, even hijacking double-decker buses to storm office buildings.
Nasr al-Saadi, a Sadr member of Parliament, said Sunday that Mr. Jaafari still had the backing of Mr. Sadr's faction. "He was elected in a democratic way," Mr. Saadi said, referring to the fact that Mr. Jaafari won his nomination in a secret ballot among the Shiite bloc's 130 members. "This is democracy. I haven't been informed that the Shiite alliance will change candidates."
The eruption among the Shiites could also redraw Iraq's political coalitions, if some Shiite politicians leave the bloc to side with other groups in the 275-member Parliament. That would weaken the religious Shiites, and it is one of the great fears of the most powerful Shiite cleric in Iraq, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. Since cobbling together the fragile Shiite coalition in late 2004, the ayatollah and his aides have been working hard to keep it together to ensure that the religious Shiites assume power over Iraq's minority Sunni Arab and Kurdish populations through elections.
The Supreme Council's defection came a day after a senior Shiite politician, Kassim Daoud, called for Mr. Jaafari to step down. Mr. Daoud has been mentioned as a possible replacement for Mr. Jaafari, as has Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi, a deputy in the Supreme Council. Mr. Mahdi lost to Mr. Jaafari by just one vote in February's balloting.
Negotiations to form the government have been deadlocked over Mr. Jaafari's nomination. The Constitution gives the largest bloc in Parliament the right to appoint a candidate, but a two-thirds vote of the entire assembly is needed to install the government. In late February, the main Sunni Arab, Kurdish and secular blocs demanded that the Shiites withdraw Mr. Jaafari and select someone else.
Last Tuesday, Mr. Hakim fired the opening salvo in his campaign to unseat Mr. Jaafari by having his aides tell reporters that the American ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, had informed Mr. Hakim that President Bush preferred another candidate. That set off a furor here, with Mr. Jaafari saying in an interview that the Americans should stop interfering. "I accept this position because it's an Iraqi, democratic choice," he said.
Mr. Hakim, a former exile in Iran, and Mr. Mahdi were among the dozen Iraqi leaders who met with Ms. Rice and Mr. Straw on Sunday.
Others in the Shiite bloc who oppose Mr. Jaafari include the Fadhila Party, led by a fundamentalist cleric who has called for Mr. Khalilzad's resignation, and many independent politicians.
Mr. Mahdi is considered the front-runner to replace Mr. Jaafari, but a compromise candidate could end up on top because of the enmity of the Sadr faction toward Mr. Mahdi and the Supreme Council. Options include Hussain al-Shahristani, a former nuclear physicist, and Ali Allawi, the finance minister and a cousin of Ahmad Chalabi, the former Pentagon favorite.
Mr. Mahdi visited Washington last fall and was believed to have the backing of the Americans at the time. A rotund, bearish-looking man, he is a Western-educated proponent of free market economics, having disavowed earlier Maoist beliefs. He owns a house in the south of France, and American officials hope his exposure to the West tempers Islamist ideals honed by years in Iran.
Ms. Rice and Mr. Straw flew into Baghdad in an unusual thunderstorm early on Sunday and were driven to the Green Zone in armored military vehicles. Sectarian violence and migrations have been soaring across Iraq partly because of the power vacuum, and American officials, including Ms. Rice, say a new government must be formed quickly to help stabilize the situation.
"The Iraqi people are losing patience and that's showing up in polling, it's showing up, I'm told, in cartoons, it's showing up in the news coverage here," she said. In the evening, after the rains had ended, Ms. Rice said she had carried "a very direct message" to the Iraqis, and they had responded favorably.
Asked whether she had indicated to Mr. Jaafari that he drop out, she said only that "the message to all parties" was to form a government quickly. She added that Iraq's leaders "have to realize there is a particular urgency to this case."
Ms. Rice was last here in October, Mr. Straw in February. They made plans to spend the night a rarity for a visiting American official, particularly since an insurgent rocket attack on Al Rashid hotel in 2003 while Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz was staying there.
The decision to stay overnight was intended as something of a political statement. Last month, a senior official noted there was concern within the administration that it seemed hypocritical for top officials to assert that progress was being made in Iraq while refusing to spend more than a few hours. Visiting dignitaries also rarely leave the Green Zone.
The world outside the zone is often awash in blood. The American military said Sunday that two soldiers had died from the crash on Saturday evening of an Apache attack helicopter, shot down south of Baghdad. Two other soldiers were killed Saturday in Baghdad by a roadside bomb, and a soldier died from noncombat injuries sustained in an operation on March 30 in Kirkuk.
In Diyala Province, gunmen killed two civilians in Balad Ruz, and insurgents blew up a Shiite mosque northeast of Baquba. A policeman in Baghdad was killed, as was a lawyer in Basra. Six bodies were found in Baghdad, two of them abducted hospital workers; all had been shot in the head. Armed men kidnapped Waleed Subhi al-Dulaimi, the official in charge of religious tourism.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/03/2006 03:14 ||
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#1
What's up with Sistani??? Black turbin-check, first name Grand Ayatollah-check. And yet... I still don't trust him, but he seems to be acting as a force for good, so far. Is he just keeping his powder dry (so to speak) to "turn" at a critical moment? Is it a Qom/Najaf turf battle over the Shite world that is causing him to resist Iranian influence? God, I wish I knew.
#3
hmm, while ive been a sistani defender here in the past, Im not sure his role now is so much positive as it is cautious.
Note - Hakim himself hasnt called for Jaafari to step down - hes still using aides do so. And SCIRI hasnt yet threatened to leave the UIA block and directly form a coalition with the Kurd/Sunni/Allawi coalition, leaving the Sadrist and Dawa in the lurch. Until they do, they are bound by the majority vote in the UIA.
My sense is that Sistani is conflicted - we know he hates Sadr and the Khomeinists - but hes commmitted to Shiite unity in the UIA - both cause he wants the Shiite laypeople to dominate Iraq, and hes afraid that if they dont, much of the Shiite street (esp the poor) will follow Sadr, weakening the religious authority of Najaf. But the Dawa-Sadr alliance, and its majority within the UIA has him in a bind - theres no easy way to oust Jaafari without splitting the UIA. IF UIA were split then the coalition of SCIRI-Kurds-Sunnis-Allawi could easily make Mahdi the PM. Instead theyre trying to offer Jaafari and Dawa inducements for change, like offering a compromise candidate.
I think what Rice and Straw are there to do is, basically, bring the message to Sistani that Jaafari has to go, and there has to be a Shiite candidate for PM whos acceptable to the Kurds, Sunnis, and Allawi-secularists. And to assure him that US and UK troops will protect the state, and protect Najaf, and protect him personally, if Sadr calls on his people to hit the mattresses again.
#4
Here is the way I see it. Jafaari is gone - it's not if but when. He'll get his dog Sadr to snarl and bark, but it's not going to work. Someone else will get the job and a new set of problems will arise.
Iraq's resistance has replaced Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as political head of the rebels, confining him to a military role, the son of Osama bin Laden's mentor said Sunday in Jordan. "The Iraqi resistance's high command asked Zarqawi to give up his political role and replaced him with an Iraqi, because of several mistakes he made," said Hudayf Azzam, who claims close contacts with the rebels.
"Zarqawi's role has been limited to military action," said Azzam, whose late father Abdullah Azzam was bin Laden's mentor. "Zarqawi bowed to the orders two weeks ago and was replaced by Iraqi national Abdullah bin Rashed al-Baghdadi," Azzam said.
Azzam, 35, whose father was known as the "prince of mujahideen," said he regularly receives "credible information on the resistance in Iraq." He said Zarqawi "made many political mistakes," including "the creation of an independent organization, Al-Qaeda in Iraq." "Zarqawi also took the liberty of speaking in the name of the Iraqi people and resistance, a role which belongs only to the Iraqis," Azzam said.
As a result "the resistance command inside and outside Iraq, including imams, criticized him and after long discussions demanded that he be confined to military action," Azzam said. "Zarqawi pledged not to carry out any more attacks against Iraq's neighbors after having been criticized for these operations which are considered a violation of sharia [Islamic law]," Azzam said.
I'm guessing that's in reference to the Jordanian boomings.
Nevertheless, the Amman-based Azzam insisted that Zarqawi remains a strong force on the ground. "He is stronger than before on the battlefield and the resistance has profited from his military experience," he said. "Five organizations have rallied around Zarqawi: the Mujahideen Army, Ansar al-Islam [also known as Ansar al-Sunna], the Islamic Army for the Liberation of Iraq, Al-Tawid Wal Hujra and Revolution 20 Brigades," he said. The joint U.S.-Iraqi operation launched in mid-March around Samarra, north of Baghdad, aimed at "dismantling these five groups," Azzam said.
General John Abizaid, the commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, said at the time that the offensive targeted Al-Qaeda in Iraq and other insurgent groups in Samarra. "Generally it's linked to the notion that in that vicinity where they're operating that there are some hard Al-Qaeda in Iraq nodes and some hard insurgent nodes that need to be dealt with," Abizaid said.
Azzam also expected "several mistakes made in the past, such as some hostage-taking, not to occur again." Asked about the wave of abductions in Iraq targeting journalists, Azzam said: "Not all journalists are innocent." "The resistance is against the occupiers. It is a natural and legitimate right," he said.
Azzam said that last week's liberation of U.S. hostage Jill Carroll, the Christian Science Monitor journalist who was held in Iraq for 12 weeks, allowed the release from jail of "wives and sisters of resistance brothers." "When the American Army cannot succeed in arresting resistance members, they arrest their wives or other members of their family," Azzam said.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/03/2006 03:02 ||
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Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
04/03/2006 9:45 Comments ||
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#2
I really like Strategy Page. It's an honest, refreshing read as always.
As for this piece on Zarqawi, it stinks of dishonesty because IMHO, in the world of ambition and lust for power, this just would not happen: Zarqawi bowed to the orders two weeks ago and was replaced by Iraqi national Abdullah bin Rashed al-Baghdadi," Azzam said.
#4
"Zarqawi must resign immediately," said Democratic Party national chairman Howard Dean on Sunday's Deface the Nation. "Thanks to his incompetence, the war in Iraq has become an unwinnable quagmire, and we are faced with the very real risk that the Bush administration may defeat us."
Posted by: Mike ||
04/03/2006 17:08 Comments ||
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As he steps onto the streets of Baghdad's Shi'ite slum Sadr City, Saed Salah chambers a round into his pistol and shoves it into the back of his pants. A mid-ranking commander in the Mahdi Army, one of the most potent of the armed militias that have carved Baghdad into fiefdoms, Saed Salah has little to fear from the authorities. The whole neighborhood knows who he is. Motorists are aware that his fighters man the makeshift checkpoints that dot the neighborhood. Even though he has attacked U.S. troops countless times, no one will touch him. If the G.I.s could find him, they would slap him straight into Abu Ghraib prison. But that's not likely to happen. The American military may occupy Iraq, Saed Salah says, and an Iraqi Prime Minister may be in power, but neither owns these streets.
He's right. Iraqi army troops set checkpoints on the main thoroughfares in and out of Sadr City, but they are powerless in the face of the Mahdi Army. "They do nothing. They can't even stop a vehicle," says a member of a separate unit of the fractious militia as he speeds past one of the checkpoints. A pickup truck overflowing with gunmen toting AK-47s roars up from behind. Their shirts are emblazoned with the name of one of the country's most formidable armed groups: MAHDI ARMY, PROTECTION COMMITTEE, 2ND BRIGADE. As they approach the army checkpoint, no one makes a move; instead of confrontation, there is acknowledgment. A militia member waves from the pickup, and a soldier sheepishly waves back. With that, the gunmen barrel through.
In Baghdad today, the militias are consolidating their power. A wave of sectarian killings since the Feb. 22 bombing of a holy Shi'ite shrine in Samarra has left hundreds--possibly thousands--of Shi'ites and Sunnis dead across the country, with more tortured and dismembered bodies turning up each day. The U.S. military is pinning its hopes on the Iraqi army and police to stand between the two sides and bring calm to a volatile situation, but in many parts of the capital, the U.S.-backed forces wield less authority than the forces taking their orders from men like Saed Salah and his boss, the rebel anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Many U.S. and Iraqi officials believe that hard-line Shi'ite militias are behind the daily abductions and executions of Sunnis and that they are doing as much to rile sectarian hatred as terrorists linked to Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq.
Yet there's also evidence that the mainstream of armed fighters on both sides is loath to allow the extremists to drag them into full-scale war--for now. In more than a dozen interviews with militia leaders, insurgent commanders and clerics, TIME sought out the men likely to be on the front lines of a full-blown sectarian conflict. What they have to say won't necessarily bolster hopes that Iraq can avoid all-out civil war indefinitely. But few militia members interviewed by TIME believe that they are fighting one now. Their assessments largely accord with those of U.S. military intelligence: that while rival death squads roam unchecked, for now civil war is in no one's interest but al-Zarqawi's. Militants on both sides say U.S. forces remain a bigger enemy than their countrymen. "The elements for civil war are all there," says a senior U.S. military-intelligence officer, "but this society is complex, and it still hasn't generated self-sustaining sectarian strife."
What no one denies is that the violence is becoming more brutal. U.S. officials say 25 bodies are found each day, although it's unclear how many are victims of sectarian killings. Unlike the terrorist attacks committed by al-Zarqawi, sectarian violence rarely bears a calling card. Shi'ite and Sunni militants interviewed by TIME say the worst killings are carried out by small, secretive death squads that the militants conveniently describe as rogue elements. Windows into the machinations of the death squads are rare, but U.S. and Iraqi forces have gained some intelligence on them. Some operations have been uncovered in Sunni-controlled areas, like those of the radical Ansar al-Sunnah group discovered in Latifiyah more than a year ago during a U.S. sweep called Operation River Walk. Execution videos, swords and instruments of torture were found by soldiers in what were deemed to be killing rooms.
A March 26 raid on a Shi'ite militia complex--believed to be a hub for a kidnapping and terrorist network--has raised suspicions that a death squad may have been run out of the complex. Shi'ite leaders claim that the 16 men who died in the raid were worshipping peacefully in what turned out to be a mosque. But Iraqi commandos and U.S. military liaisons told TIME that the dead perished in battle with weapons in their hands. According to U.S. military officials, more than 60 reports of kidnappings or executions have been linked to the mosque, including the slayings of three Iraqi special-forces soldiers. Shi'ite leaders continue to deny the allegations.
Such discoveries lend credence to those, like former Prime Minister and chief U.S. ally Iyad Allawi, who say Iraq is already mired in civil war. Yet despite the bloodshed on both sides, the militants on the front lines don't consider themselves in outright conflict with one another. "War might be tomorrow or one year from now; it all depends on the sparks made by those seeking to inflame it," says Abu Mohammed, a former top-ranking officer in Saddam Hussein's army and now a key Baathist insurgent strategist. Another Baathist insurgent downplays the pervasiveness of sectarian hatred: "It's true there are death squads killing Shi'ite and killing Sunni, and while they're Iraqi, they're really the instruments of foreign interests"--referring to al-Qaeda and Iran. His Shi'ite counterparts in al-Sadr's militia agree. Two mid-ranking field commanders of the Shi'ite Mahdi Army say the violence falls short of war with the Sunnis. "Sectarian violence is made by the occupation forces. There is no civil war," says Saed Salah as members of his cell nod in agreement.
Both Shi'ite and Sunni militants insist they would rather fight to rid Iraq of U.S. forces than take up arms against each other. Abu Mohammed says there's nothing to be gained by waging a costly religious fight while the U.S. remains in the country. "The Shi'ites are an inseparable part of the resistance. We have to unite our efforts against the invaders, so we must be careful to avoid a civil war that will weaken us," he says. Contact between Sunni insurgents and Shi'ite militias like al-Sadr's Mahdi Army have been under way since the battle of Fallujah in 2004, with both exchanging expertise and manpower. "We have nothing against Shi'ites ... our dead are buried with theirs, as theirs are buried with ours in Fallujah," says insurgent commander Abu Saif. It's a sentiment echoed by the Sadrist leaders, who bear scars from dueling with the U.S. "We have many relationships binding us together," says Abu Zainab.
Still, few U.S. or Iraqi officials believe Iraq can ever become a stable, functioning society as long as political parties maintain their armed wings. The U.S. would prefer that the Iraqi security forces disarm the militias, but it hasn't happened. A senior military official in Baghdad says the U.S. is deliberately avoiding confrontations with the militias. But last month alone, soldiers from the 4th Infantry Division in Baghdad have had what the official calls 19 "encounters" with militias, including a shooting incident. The danger is that the bigger the militias get, the more likely they are to intensify their clashes over turf and authority. A U.S. military-intelligence officer says there is still some reason to believe that Iraqis will put their common interests ahead of their rivalries. "In this society, there are many ties that bind--from tribe to clan to educational, social and political," he says. "I don't think the threads have been cut." If they ever are, it may prove impossible to put them back together.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/03/2006 02:59 ||
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#1
As a pickup full of AK47 holding militia aproaches a checkpoint, a 105 or 125 should take it out. Let's get real out there. We gotta shorten the lives of these militia goons. Hit and run until they go underground, then drag the fine net and pick up the stragglers.
#2
He's right. Iraqi army troops set checkpoints on the main thoroughfares in and out of Sadr City, but they are powerless in the face of the Mahdi Army
ROFL. Yeah right. Ahhh hubris. That glorious feeling one always has just before one gets smacked down hard.
#3
Kurdistan - if I can call it that - is effectively run by strong-men ("warlords" doesn't apply) Jalal Al-Talibani and Massoud Al-Barzani. The thing is: they are our strong-men. When Iran was integrated to the civilized world, the Shah held the Mullah parasite class in check, and he delivered prosperity and relative liberty. Jimmy Carter chose to subvert the status quo by attempting to export untenable human rights standards. When the Shah was overthrown, Carter's special advisor referred to Khomenei as a "saint." After taking a human rights bow, Jimmy Carter did nothing while the Khomeneists operated a backward tyranny that destroyed the country.
Strong-man governance of Iran will evolve into a Western type regime. But leave Iranians on their own, and they will rally around self-important control-freaks who are obsessed with maintaining power.
The US military yesterday announced the deaths of six of its troops across Iraq, including two pilots of an Apache helicopter that was shot down by insurgents. The announcement comes as US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her British counterpart Jack Straw made a surprise visit to Iraq yesterday.
The US military said the bodies of two pilots of the Apache Longbow helicopter, that crashed on Saturday evening after coming under enemy fire, were recovered.
The military also announced the deaths of four more troops since Thursday, including two soldiers killed together late on Saturday by a roadside bomb attack during a foot patrol in central Baghdad.
An American soldier died near Kirkuk, northern Iraq, and the other was killed in combat in the restive western province of Al Anbar.
Twelve Iraqis were killed in violence yesterday, while insurgents blew up a Shi'ite mosque near Baquba, on Saturday. Meanwhile, bodies of at least 42 men have been found in several neighbourhoods of Baghdad since Saturday.
Frustrated by Iraq's failure to form a government, the chief US and British diplomats told squabbling leaders yesterday that it was time to pick a governing coalition.
Rice was careful to say the US did not want to interfere in the democratic process, yet harped on Prime Minister Ibrahim Al Jaafari's failure to organise a unity government.
Shi'ite politicians are going public with demands that Al Jaafari withdraw his candidacy to head the next government. A third Shi'ite MP, Sheikh Jalal Al Deen Al Saghir, called yesterday for Jaafari to withdraw his candidacy to head the next government.
The Iraqi government, meanwhile, announced the arrest of an unidentified aide to Al Qaeda in Iraq's leader Abu Musab Al Zarqawi in Baghdad's predominantly western Sunni neighbourhood of Jamaa.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/03/2006 02:58 ||
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#1
I hope the aide had his laptop handy when he was caught. More fun than a barrel of monkeys, laptops are... or so I've heard.
The war in Iraq has entered a bloodier phase, with the killings of Iraqi civilians rising tremendously in daily sectarian violence while American casualties have steadily declined, spurring tens of thousands of Iraqis to flee from mixed Shiite-Sunni areas.
The new pattern, detailed in casualty and migration statistics from the past six months and in interviews with American commanders and Iraqi officials, has led to further separation of Shiite and Sunni Arabs, moving the country toward a de facto partitioning along sectarian and ethnic lines an outcome that the Bush administration has doggedly worked to avoid over the past three years.
The nature of the Iraq war has been changing since at least the late autumn, when political friction between Sunni Arabs and Shiite Arabs rose even as American troops began implementing a long-term plan to decrease their street presence. But the killing accelerated after the bombing on Feb. 22 of a revered Shiite shrine, which unleashed a wave of sectarian bloodletting.
About 900 Iraqi civilians died violently in March, up from about 700 the month before, according to military statistics and the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, an independent organization that tracks deaths. Meanwhile, at least 29 American troops were killed in March, the second-lowest monthly total since the war began.
The White House says that little violence occurs in most of Iraq's 18 provinces. But those four or five provinces where the majority of the killings and migrations take place are Iraq's major population centers, generally mixed regions that include Baghdad, and contain much of the nation's infrastructure crucial factors in Iraq's prospects for stability.
The Iraqi public's reaction to the violence has been dramatic. Since the shrine bombing, 30,000 to 36,000 Iraqis have fled their homes because of sectarian violence or fear of reprisals, say officials at the International Organization for Migration, based in Geneva. The Iraqi Ministry of Displacement and Migration estimated that at least 5,500 families have moved, with the biggest group being 1,250 families settling in the Shiite holy city of Najaf after leaving Baghdad and Sunni-dominated towns in central Iraq. The families are living with relatives or in abandoned buildings, and a crisis of food and water shortages is starting to build, officials say.
"We lived in Latifiya for 30 years," said Abu Hussein al-Ramahi, a Shiite farmer with a family of seven, referring to a village south of Baghdad that is a stronghold of the Sunni Arab insurgency. "But a month ago, two armed people with masks on their faces said if I stayed in this area, my family and I would no longer remain alive. They shot bullets near my feet. I went back home immediately and we left the area early next morning for Najaf." Mr. Ramahi's family and other migrants are now squatting in a derelict hotel in the holy city.
"It's almost a creeping polarization of Iraq along ethnic and sectarian lines," said Anthony H. Cordesman, a military expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
In the chaos, he said, "We see a slow, steady loss of confidence, a growing process of distrust which you see day by day as people at the political level bicker. Everything has become sectarian and ethnic."
The shifts in violence and migration patterns are fueling discussion about whether Iraq is devolving into civil war. Although that determination may be impossible to make in the short term, the debate itself could increase the political pressure that President Bush is facing at home to draw down significantly the force of 133,000 American troops here. Even if American deaths keep falling, polls show the American public has little appetite for engagement in an Iraqi civil war.
Commanders in Iraq say the insurgent groups in the country, particularly Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, have shifted the focus of their attacks in an effort to foment civil war and undermine negotiations to form a four-year government. "What we are seeing him do now is shift his target from the coalition forces to Iraqi civilians and Iraqi security forces," said Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, a senior spokesman for the American command. "The enemy is trying to stop the formation of this national unity government; he's trying to inflame sectarian violence."
Dozens of bodies, garroted or executed with gunshots to the head, are turning up almost daily in Baghdad alone. The gruesome work is usually attributed to death squads or Shiite militias, some in Iraqi police or army uniforms. Meanwhile, powerful bombings, a favorite tactic of the Sunni Arab-led insurgency, continue to devastate civilian areas and Iraqi bases or recruitment centers.
At the same time, the number of kidnappings of Iraqis is surging because of an explosion in criminal gangs working for their own gain or with armed political groups. Scores of civilians are abducted every week, usually for ransoms of $20,000 to $30,000. In recent weeks, masked men have stormed offices in Baghdad and hauled away all the workers.
It is not clear whether this change in the nature of the war is permanent. A wider anti-American offensive by the Sunni Arab insurgents or a Shiite rebellion could suddenly shift the brunt of violence back against the foreign forces, resulting in more American deaths, as when the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr ignited two uprisings in 2004.
But in the wake of the shrine bombing, Mr. Sadr's thousands-strong militia is focusing its wrath on Sunni Arabs; the militiamen are accused of killing hundreds in late February alone. As for the traditional insurgency, some hard-line Sunni Arab officials say the Sunnis are more concerned now about the growing power of religious Shiite leaders, their militias and Iran than about the American presence.
The results of the December elections showed that the religious Shiite coalition, backed by Iran, will almost certainly control the new government, and that the Sunni Arabs, no matter their participation in the vote, will face Shiite rule for years. That Sunni-Shiite tension sharpened when insurgents destroyed the golden dome of the Askariya shrine in Samarra in February, and vengeful Shiite militiamen rampaged through Baghdad and other cities.
At the same time, American commanders have decreased the number of patrols, to try to push the Iraqi security forces into a more visible role.
That, along with improved armor and bomb detection, may partly explain the drop in casualties. Last October, 96 American troops died. That number has decreased every month since then, but plummeted most sharply between February and March to 29 in March from 55 in February.
In the same period, Iraqi civilian deaths generally increased, from 465 in October, according to the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, which tallies deaths from a wide range of news media reports, a methodology believed to give rough though under-reported estimates.
The broad trend is also supported by statistics on number of attacks. A senior Pentagon official said the number of attacks on Americans, Iraqi forces and Iraqi civilians had remained at about 600 per week since last September.
But the focus of the attacks has shifted in September, 82 percent of attacks were against American-led forces and 18 percent against Iraqis; in February, 65 percent were against the foreigners and 35 percent against Iraqis.
Top American officials are concerned that despite the growing number of trained and equipped Iraqi security forces being fielded, and the large number of insurgents killed or captured in the past six months, the number of overall attacks has not declined, the Defense Department official said.
"It should be worrisome to us that it's still at the same level," said the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly on the trend. "With the number of operations that are occurring and the number of people we are detaining growing, and truly with the number of tactical successes that we're having, you would expect to see a reduction in the trend."
American officials say the solution to the sectarian bloodshed lies in the Iraqis quickly forming a national unity government, with representatives of all major groups in Iraq checking each other through compromises.
But with each political milestone the transfer of sovereignty in 2004, two sets of elections in 2005, the referendum on the constitution the Americans have asserted that the country would stabilize. Instead, the violence has continued unabated, sometimes changing in nature, as it is doing now, but never declining.
If the Americans push too hard against one side or the other in an effort to clamp down on the violence, they risk losing political allies. American relations with Shiite leaders have soured in recent months, partly over Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad's insistence that the Shiite militias be disbanded. He now says those militias kill more people than bombings from the Sunni Arab-led insurgency, a declaration that has infuriated the Shiites.
In any case, the mass migrations could mean that Iraq's political groups will have little incentive to compromise with one another, as they separate into their enclaves. For example, at least 761 families have settled in Baghdad after moving from Anbar Province and other Sunni-dominated areas to the west, according to Iraqi government statistics. The same is happening on the Sunni Arab end there are reports of 50 families moving from Baghdad to the Sunni enclave of Falluja.
Aid groups have been handing out mattresses, blankets, cooking sets and other gear to families throughout central and southern Iraq.
"The situation for those displaced won't be resolved anytime soon," said Jemini Pandya, a spokeswoman for the International Organization for Migration.
The migrations are partly caused by the fear of partisan Iraqi security forces, many of them trained by the Americans. The police and commando forces are infested with militia recruits, mostly from Shiite political parties, and are accused by Sunni Arabs of carrying out sectarian executions. One Sunni-run TV network warned viewers last week not to allow Iraqi policemen or soldiers into their homes unless the forces are accompanied by American troops.
"The militias are in charge now," said Aliyah al-Bakr, 42, a Sunni Arab schoolteacher who had two male relatives abducted and executed by black-clad gunmen on a recent night in Baghdad. "I'm more afraid of Iraqi militias than of the Americans. But the American presence is still the cornerstone of all the problems. We didn't have these kinds of problems before they came here."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/03/2006 02:53 ||
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#1
That should be "fleeing from," not "fleeing to," my apologies.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/03/2006 2:56 Comments ||
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#2
Sounds like the Iranians are stirring up new troubles, and doing so knowing that Dubya must respond wid better or stronger measures. Iran = North Korea > regional bellicosity is as much to get the USA-World to acknowledge and verify the "greatness" of the Rogue states as presently governed; as well as for inducing national suicide in case the Radics fail. Other than the anti-Bush/GOP MSM and anti-American Americans already inside the Amer NPE, the Iranians next best ace is to cause such handfuls of high profile, PC-incorrect casualties/losses amongst US-Allied milfors, where America wins any ground war in Iran but loses in the Medias. Lastly, the Clinton-led/centric Dems may govern as POTUSes in 2008 becuz new 9-11's in America are in reality [anti-Amer American-approved?] disguised assassination attempts against Bush and the bulk of the GOP-Conservative or anti-Clinton Congress. The Dems > Surviving GOP-caused/blamed Amer Hirsohima(s) = Saving the world from GOP-caused/blamed nuclear war vv "brinkmanship". THE WOT IS ULTIMATELY ABOUT CONTROL OF THE WORLD AND THE FUTURE OWG - AMERICA AND ITS ALLIES MUST WIN, OR FACE BEING DESTROYED. As a Left-alleged Fascist SOCIALIST, Dubya is both Adolf Bushitler whom needs to be stopped iff not wiped out, as well as a "Young Turk", unruly, arrogant, Thinks-He-Knows-Everything self-centered HALF-A-COMMUNIST/SOCIALIST, HALF-A-LEFTSOCIALIST BROTHER TO STALIN, MARX, AND MAO. THe Lefties are RINOS for a reason(s).
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
04/03/2006 8:08 Comments ||
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#4
Seems like he entire Iraqi civil war is going on in Joe's mind.
So, even though they have radio, TV, and the internet, you just can't take the caveman out of the Iraqi. It's like a Darwinean black hole. Everything that evolves is sucked inside out and returned to it's most simplistic form, tribal survival. The same is happening in Pakistan.
#5
The U.S> is trying to maintain a balance of power -- read terror -- to see whether some sort of agreement might be reached. The key is really the Sunni insurgents. When they fear the U.S. leaving more than the U.S. staying, then the U.S. can go after the Sadr brigades. Sadr's position is weaker than he thinks because were the U.S. to leave, the Sunni insurgents would have a field day, if one believes that there was good reason why they ruled the country for 35 years despite being a minority.
Al Qaeda leader in Iraq Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has shifted tactics, focusing his suicide bombers on Iraqi forces and civilians instead of American troops, the chief U.S. military spokesman said on Thursday.
"What we are seeing him do now is shift his target from the coalition forces to Iraqi civilians and Iraqi security forces," Major General Rick Lynch told a news conference.
While monthly U.S. casualties have been falling since November, attacks on Iraqi forces are escalating as Zarqawi attempts to undermine efforts to build up the army and security forces, Lynch said.
"The number of attacks against Iraqi security force members has increased 35 percent in the last four weeks compared to the previous six months," said Lynch.
"That is by design. The enemy knows the Iraqi security forces are increasing in capability."
A U.S. troop pullout is contingent on the performance of Iraqi troops, who have watched suicide bombers kill thousands of their comrades.
A suicide bomber strapped with explosives killed 40 Iraqi army recruits at a base near the northern city of Mosul this week.
Islamic militants have also been carrying out bolder attacks at police stations.
Guerrillas attacked the police headquarters and courthouse in the Iraqi town of Miqdadiya this month, killing at least 18 people and releasing prisoners, police said.
Zarqawi, who has claimed responsibility for some of the most spectacular suicide bombings in Iraq, has kept a lower profile recently. His large-scale bombings have decreased.
Iraqi Interior Minister Bayan Jabor said this week that Zarqawi was no longer a threat.
But military intelligence sources in Iraq say they have no reason to believe the Jordanian militant has weakened and he remains a recruiting magnet for young Sunni Arabs.
One said recently it appeared that international al Qaeda leaders may have prevailed on Zarqawi to limit attacks on Shi'ite civilians on the grounds this was counter-productive.
Lynch said the improved performance of Iraqi forces and their growing ability to carry out operations on their own had contributed to a fall in the number of daily attacks.
He noted that suicide bombings, the biggest killers in Iraq had dropped, as had the number of overall assaults.
"Last year, May to July, we averaged 50 suicide attacks per month. This year, January to March, it was 24 per month," he said.
Previous lulls in insurgent activity have been followed by a frenzy of attacks.
Lynch said al Qaeda was now focused on car bombs and roadside bombs to try to ignite a sectarian civil war while carrying out selective assassinations.
The bombing of a Shi'ite shrine last month which the United States blamed on al Qaeda triggered reprisals and pushed Iraq closer than ever to sectarian civil war.
Lynch said there had been 955 murders or execution-style killings in Baghdad alone since the shrine attack and 1,313 nationwide: "(In) January in Baghdad we averaged 11 murders or executions per day. They peaked at one point in time recently with an average of 36. We have reduced that back to 25."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/03/2006 02:51 ||
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A bomb exploded Monday at a shop selling Iraqi scrap metal in Jordan, killing two people and wounding four, the official Jordanian news agency reported. The blast occurred when a prospective buyer was looking at merchandise in the shop in Khalidiyah, about 40 miles north of the capital, Amman. The buyer and shop owner died instantly, the Petra news agency reported. The shop sells iron rods and other scrap imported from Iraq.
Including unexploded ordnance, it seems
Jordan prohibited the importation of Iraqi scrap metal early last year following reports that Jordanian scrap yards contained parts of Iraqi missiles that could have been contaminated with radioactive material.
Posted by: Steve ||
04/03/2006 09:04 ||
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Motorcycle gunmen shot dead a policeman and wounded his son in an attack on Sunday in the town of Lamitan, Basilan.
Officials said Senior Police Officer 2 Salvador Castro II was driving his motorcycle with his son, Salvador, and a nephew when the assailants armed with automatic pistols drove near them.
The assassins opened fire at the victims near the village of Semut about 8:30 a.m.
The policeman died. His son was injured. The third passenger was unscathed.
"Castro was shot in the head. He was killed on the spot," Inspector Elmer Acuna, the towns deputy chief of police, said.
Police appealed to those who witnessed the attack to help in the investigation.
No group or individual claimed responsibility for the killing, but the island is a known lair of the Abu Sayyaf bandits blamed for the series of killing in the South. The island is also notorious for vendetta killings.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/03/2006 03:21 ||
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#1
Lamitan is where the ASG raided the hospital during the Burnham hostage ordeal and where the ASG continually run ops. I thing Hamsaraji Sali was killed there, by the military, as well.
Posted by: 49 pan ||
04/03/2006 21:43 Comments ||
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TEHRAN -- Iran said Sunday that it has test-fired what it described as a sonar-evading underwater missile just two days after announcing it fired a new missile that could carry multiple warheads and evade radar systems. The new missile is among the world's fastest and can outpace an enemy warship, Gen. Ali Fadavi of the Revolutionary Guards told state television.
Fadavi said only one other country has a missile that moves underwater as fast as the model he described, which he said has a speed of 328 feet per second. State television showed what it described as the missile being fired. "The missile carries a very powerful warhead that enables it to operate against groups of warships and big submarines," he said. He contended that the vessels that would launch the missile are able to evade detection systems but that, "even if an enemy's warship sonar can detect the missile, no warship can escape from this missile because of its high speed."
The missile's speed would make it about three or four times faster than a normal torpedo and as fast as the world's fastest known underwater missile, the Russian-made VA-111 Shkval, developed in 1995. It was not immediately known if the Iranian missile was based on the Shkval. The new weapon gives Iran "superiority" against any warship in the region, Fadavi said, in a veiled reference to U.S. vessels in the Persian Gulf. It was not immediately clear whether the projectile can carry a nuclear warhead. Fadavi said that the missile launched Sunday was the result of six years of work.
The test, as well as the one described Friday, was part of a week of naval maneuvers in southern Iran along the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman. They involve 17,000 members of the Revolutionary Guards. The news agency IRNA said the maneuvers were intended to display "the country's defensive capabilities."
The underwater missile, called the "Hoot," or "whale," could raise concerns over Iran's power in the gulf, a vital corridor for the world's oil supplies and where the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet is based. During Iran's war with Iraq in the 1980s, Iranian ships attacked oil tankers in the waterway. The United States and its Western allies have been watching Iran's progress in missile capabilities with concern. Iran possesses the Shahab-3 missile, capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and hitting U.S. forces in the Middle East.
Iran's military show of force follows increasing international pressure over its nuclear program. On Wednesday, the UN Security Council urged Iran to suspend its uranium-enrichment activities and asked the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency to report back on Iran's compliance within 30 days.
Iran has refused to comply. The video broadcast Sunday showed crew members on a submarine and described them as preparing to launch the missile. Another film clip supposedly showed it being fired into the water from the deck of a ship.
The Revolutionary Guards air force chief called the weapon tested Friday as "a very advanced missile." Iran's envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Aliasghar Soltanieh, told CNN on Sunday that he does not believe that the weapon could carry a nuclear warhead. "The world should not worry because any country has its own self-defense conventional military activities," he said.
Posted by: Steve ||
04/03/2006 10:43 ||
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#1
Why 'boast'? Sounds like an attempt to deter attack by US. Previous 'signals' from Teheran seemed to actually be daring/inviting US attack. If that was still the case, why advertise your 'new' ability to inflict major damage on your potential foe?
Possibilities:
1) Boast is not true, and is intended to cause US to pursue more difficult attack course.
2) Boast is true, and is indicative of some change in Teheran thinking (if such a word can be used regarding Teheran leadership.) If so, what changed and why?
#3
So if the press is reporting this, that means W. can attack anytime, since we know they have them?
After all, the press would'nt decieve us or report anything that is just propaganda.
#6
What are people's thoughts on how Iran was able to field this weapon? General Fadavi claims that it took 6 years to produce, which suggests that it was acquired after the 1999 IDEX arms exhibition (where it was aggressively marketed by Russian arms dealers), reversed engineered and indigenously produced. But are Iranian engineers capable of reverse-engineering such an advanced weapon?
#8
But are Iranian engineers capable of reverse-engineering such an advanced weapon?
I say yes. The Skval is essentially a 6000lb unguided solid fueled (tech the Iranians also bought from the neo-Soviets) underwater rocket. While it incorporates some neat hydrodynamic theory, there is little high tech manufacturing in it (i.e. sensors, processors, software). The Iranians are more than capable of copying it after disassembling one of them.
It does allow small massed fast attack craft to launch ship killers, that cannot be spoofed, from outside the range Phalanx and machine guns. Thus requiring the US Navy to attack them farther out with helicopters or ship's cannon, and maybe Sea Sparrows and IR guided RAM missiles.
BTW, an anti-torpedo torpedo. The navy tested one 10 or 15 years ago. I wonder whatever became of it.
Posted by: ed ||
04/03/2006 18:18 Comments ||
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#9
From FT.com:
Iranâs war games see oil futures rise by $2 Crude oil prices jumped to their highest level since Hurricane Katrina amid uncertainty about Nigerian supplies and as Iran announced it had tested new weapons during war games in the Strait of Hormuz.
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/03/2006 21:45 Comments ||
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#12
No surprise here - just more indicia/evidencia that, within the context of defeating America's future GMD, Russia's alleged "real" anti-GMD superweapon is a long-range, standoff underwater weapon capable of extreme self-defense maneuvers, and remote or independent control, and which can "pop-up" like a SLCM/SUBROC near its target or in final attack phase. Iff we were back in WW2, its predecessor would be the famed, but slow-moving, Japanese "suicide" KAITEN? subs. Traditional Cold War, land-based, ICBM strikes, includ MRV/MIRV-capable, MIGHT NOW be relegated to MOSTLY Second-Strike/Follow-On weapons, with post-Cold War priority now given to TERROR = COMMANDO-SAPPER STRIKES, LR Bomber, and UW-Sub = Arsenal Ship-based land- and naval attack!?
Tehran - A top Iranian military official said Monday that Iran will test another powerful torpedo and more missiles during the ongoing manoeuvres in the Persian Gulf, national IRIB television reported. 'Another powerful torpedo made by the Revolutionary Guards will be tested today during the war games,' Rear Admiral Mohammad-Ebrahim Dehghani told IRIB, adding more missiles would be test-fired within days.
Iran's paramilitary Islamic Revolution's Guard Corps (IRGC) on Sunday said that an underwater missile was successfully tested during the Persian Gulf naval manoeuvre. Deputy commander of the navy forces of the IRGC, General Ali Fadavi, said the homemade missile could hit a target with a maximum speed of 100 metres per second, but without disclosing further details.
'The Iranian people would have important news that will make them proud,' IRIB quoted Rear Admiral Dehghani as saying. The underwater missile is the second one tested within 72 hours. On Friday, a new missile was successfully tested during the same naval manoeuvre. The missile was able to carry multiple warheads, simultaneously hit several targets and to escape radar systems.
The press seems to be mixing up missiles and torpedos. Or maybe it's the Iranians who are confused.
The week-long 'Holy Prophet' naval manoeuvre started Friday on the northern coasts of the Persian Gulf with more than 17,000 armed forces participating. The manoeuvre came less than two days after the United Nations Security Council issued a deadline calling on Iran to suspend all uranium enrichment activities within 30 days.
Iran's Shahab-3 missiles reportedly have a range of 1,300 to 2,000 kilometres and are also in the hands of the IRGC. They have caused grave concern in Israel, which is within their range.
Tehran has assured the international community that the missiles are for defensive purposes only. Last year, Iran announced that it had successfully tested a new engine using solid fuel to increase the range.
Posted by: Steve ||
04/03/2006 10:35 ||
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#1
My fear is that they will next uncover the secrets to manufacturing the "20,000 mm LePage Glue Gun"! Said gun, as written about in Heller's "Catch-22" can glue togegether an entire formation of planes in flight!
#6
The SHKVAL is a dual-use, nuke-capable system, so any IRAN-specific indigenous derivatives will also be dual-use, ergo HANS BLIX says today Iran is 5 + years away from a nuke bomb. BLIX > "Go home, people, its only Uranium, NOT PLUTONIUM. NO WMDS IN IRAN = NORTH KOREA, and Marvin Martian has NOT lost his Explosive Space Modulator-r-r-r" becuz of a certain Fascist Wascally Wabbit".
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
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Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
A regional leader of outlawed Purbo Banglar Communist Party (Janajuddho) was killed in an 'encounter' between members of Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) and his accomplices early yesterday at Bellabaria village under Baliakandi upazila of Rajbari district. 
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ISTANBUL, Turkey (AP) - A group of men stopped a passenger bus and tossed gasoline bombs at it, sending the vehicle careening into pedestrians and killing three in Turkey's largest city on Sunday as pro-Kurdish riots continued to spread.
Turkish police have fired into the air to disperse a protest march in mainly-Kurdish southeast Turkey, killing one person. In Istanbul, three people were reported killed after a molotov cocktail was thrown at a bus. Security sources said additional troops were being deployed to Kiziltepe on Sunday, a town of about 100,000 people south of the region's main city of Diyarbakir. 
Agitated protesters went on the rampage in southeastern Turkey on Saturday in the fifth day of street battles with the security forces. Fresh clashes between protesters and police in Kýzýltepe, near the Syrian border, killed one protester and injured 10 others on Saturday, security sources said. The latest death brought the toll in this week's violence to eight dead. In Saturday's violence, demonstrators set fire to a branch of a major bank and a building used by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). There were also scuffles in Silopi, at the Iraqi border, where riot police stopped protesters from marching to the office of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), Anatolia said. A three-year-old boy died of gunshot wounds on Friday in Diyarbakir and local media said he was killed after police fired shots over the heads of protesters. 
Zacarias Moussaoui is eligible for the death penalty, a jury decides in the first U.S. trial about the 9/11 attacks.
DOVER, Del. - A C-5 cargo plane with 17 people aboard crashed near the Dover Air Force Base Monday morning, according to a state public safety official. 
Ten people including five tribal police were killed and 13 injured in separate bomb blasts in Balochistan on Sunday, officials said. Three civilians a man, a woman and a young girl were killed and seven injured in two back-to-back bomb explosions at a state-run farm in the town of Kohlu, 300 kilometres east of Quetta, a security official told AFP.P. The official had earlier said that two paramilitary soldiers were killed in the blast. Initial reports had indicated that two paramilitary soldiers were killed, but later the dead were identified as three civilians, the official said, on condition of anonymity. He blamed the attack on tribal militants. The three civilians worked at the farm.
The government might relax some restrictions on banned militant organisation 
An exchange of rocket fire between Pakistani troops and pro-Taliban fighters near the Afghan border has killed one soldier and wounded 10 people, including three children, officials and residents say.
Every day a couple of bombs go off somewhere in Balochistan destroying a bridge, a culvert, a railway track, an electricity tower or a gas pipeline. The insurgents have become so audacious that even the chief ministers house isnt safe from mortar attacks anymore. Every day army convoys and outposts in Waziristan are attacked and the death toll of soldiers and local collaborators is rising. Even the interior minister has conceded that Al-Qaeda/Taliban have spread trouble in the neighbouring districts of Bannu, 
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How I robbed the railways!
