Iraq analysis

[Al-khiyal]

Six journalists have been killed in Iraq in an “unprecedented atmosphere of intimidation and terror”, according to the International Federation of Journalists.

The IFJ claims that the latest murders bring to around 120 the number of journalists and media staff killed in the country since the 2003 invasion. According to the IFJ, Laith Mashaan, a Nahrein Television correspondent, and Muazaz Ahmed, a technician at the station, were stopped on their way home in the south of Baghdad on Sunday by people dressed as policemen who stopped them and asked for their papers.

The IFJ said their bodies were found yesterday.

Photographer, Abed Shaker al Delaimi, who worked for the al Jumhureyya and al Qadeseyya newspapers and was an occasional freelance for [/i]Reuters, was also killed on Sunday in Basra according to the IFJ. He was said to be an active member of Iraqi Journalists' Syndicate.

The IFJ said it has also been told in recent days of the killing of a print shop worker in a bomb blast near the offices of state-run Al-Sabah newspaper. And it said that Saad Shammari, a TV journalist who hosted a show on the Al-Iraqiyah channel, and been found dead apparently strangled by a roadside in Baghdad.

Another journalist, Saud M’Zahim Al-Hedaithi, working for Baghdadiyah TV, was reportedly also killed on the same day.

IFJ general secretary Aidan White said: “The Iraq story cannot be told in truth when a climate of violence, threats and suspicion surrounds the work of media. Urgent action needs to be taken by the authorities to ease the situation.”

Six more journalists killed in Iraq

[Al-khiyal]

More U.S. troops killed in Iraq than at Pearl Harbor

[Al-khiyal]

It was almost 3 a.m. in Zubaida Square in central Baghdad last week when headlights signaled one flash, then two, then one again.

From the darkness, someone signaled back. The watchers were there.

As evidence mounts that Shiite police commandos are carrying out secret killings, Sunni Arab neighborhoods across Baghdad have begun forming citizen groups to keep the paramilitary forces out of their areas entirely. In large swaths of western Baghdad, and in at least six majority Sunni areas in its center, young men take turns standing in streets after the 11 p.m. curfew, to send out signals by flashlights and cellphones if strangers approach.

In some cases, the Sunnis have set up barricades and have taken up arms against Shiite-led commando raids into their neighborhoods. In other cases, residents have tipped off Sunni insurgents. Watch groups have been assembled in other mixed areas, including Baquba to the north and Mahmudiya to the south, residents and officials said.

Three years after the American invasion, the war has settled here, in the quiet of neighborhoods, streets and Iraqis' backyards. Dozens of bodies surface daily. People are taken from their homes and executed. Assassinations are routine. But instead of looking to the government for protection, ordinary Sunni Arabs are taking up arms against it, perhaps the most vivid illustration of the depth of Sunni mistrust of the American backed, Shiite-led security forces. "There is no bridge of confidence between the government and the Iraqi people," said Tarik al-Hashimy, a vice president of Iraq who is a Sunni Arab.

The groups, informal networks of neighbors, are not tracked by the authorities, and so are difficult to count. The Iraqi Army's battalions responsible for the northern and central portions of eastern Baghdad touched base with groups in Fadhel, Qaera, Waziriya and Adhamiya last Monday night. Many more neighborhoods, including Khudra, Jihad and Ghazaliya, in heavily Sunni western Baghdad, report similar organization. The residents emerge after dark, and are encountered by Iraqi Army night patrols who check in on them.........

Alarmed by raids, neighbors stand guard in Iraq

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[Al-khiyal]

A sectarian scuffle in the lobby of Iraq's parliament - over a religious mobile phone ringtone - prompted an angry walkout by some legislators on Wednesday.

Meeting for only the second full day of normal business after five months of sectarian stalemate over a new government, parliament was briefly adjourned after the Sunni speaker refused to let a Shi'ite woman member lodge a complaint about the melee.

Gufran al-Saidi, from the Islamist movement of fiery Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, stormed out and told reporters that a bodyguard for speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani had attacked one of her aides on Monday because her phone played a Shi'ite chant.

Other members joined the walkout and complained that the speaker had acted improperly by switching off Saidi's microphone and ordering television cameras to be switched off.

Saidi, appearing veiled in a traditional black robe, said her aide was holding her phone for her in the lobby when it rang -- with a Shi'ite religious harmony. A bodyguard for speaker Mashhadani came over and told him to switch it off, she said.

He did. But when the phone rang again, several parliamentary guards attacked Saidi's assistant and there was a general scuffle, she said, in which she too became involved.

"I demand an urgent investigation," she said.

Parliament resumed after about 20 minutes and Mashhadani, chairing the session, was not available for comment.

He was appointed last month as part of deal that shared out top jobs among Shi'ites, Sunnis and Kurds.

The dominant Shi'ite Islamists have already complained that the speaker, a former military officer and physician, is too sectarian in his approach and needs to be more diplomatic.

Shi'ite Prime Minister-designate says he hopes to appoint a full cabinet this week to end months of political stalemate that have left Iraq on the brink of an all-out sectarian civil war.

Walkout, mobile ringtone row disrupt Iraq assembly

[Al-khiyal]

May 10th - - SOME 200,000 guns the US sent to Iraqi security forces may have been smuggled to terrorists, it was feared yesterday.

The 99-tonne cache of AK47s was to have been secretly flown out from a US base in Bosnia. But the four planeloads of arms have vanished.

Orders for the deal to go ahead were given by the US Department of Defense. But the work was contracted out via a complex web of private arms traders.

And the Moldovan airline used to transport the shipment was blasted by the UN in 2003 for smuggling arms to Liberia, human rights group Amnesty has discovered.

It follows a separate probe claiming that thousands of guns meant for Iraq's police and army instead went to al-Qaeda

Amnesty chief spokesman Mike Blakemore said: "It's unbelievable that no one can account for 200,000 assault rifles. If these weapons have gone missing it's a terrifying prospect." American defence chiefs hired a US firm to take the guns, from the 90s Bosnian war, to Iraq.

But air traffic controllers in Baghdad have no record of the flights, which supposedly took off between July 2004 and July 2005. A coalition forces spokesman confirmed they had not received "any weapons from Bosnia" and added they were "not aware of any purchases for Iraq from Bosnia". Nato and US officials have already voiced fears that Bosnian arms - sold by US, British and Swiss firms - are being passed to insurgents. A Nato spokesman said: "There's no tracking mechanism to ensure they don't fall into the wrong hands. There are concerns that some may have been siphoned off." This year a newspaper claimed two UK firms were involved in a deal in which thousands of guns for Iraqi forces were re-routed to al-Qaeda.

One arms broker's lawyer is said to have admitted that nearly all of a shipment of 1,500 AK-47s went missing. And a US official said £270million of equipment could not be traced.

Meanwhile, Aerocom, the Moldovan air firm at the centre of the 200,000 missing AK47s, was stripped of its licence by its national authorities a day before the first shipment.

Two other companies in the complicated sale claim to have papers proving the guns were delivered in Iraq but refuse to show them......

Have 200,000 AK47s fallen into the hands of Iraq terrorists? Fears over secret U.S. arms shipment

[Al-khiyal]

Local aid agencies warn that families displaced immediately following the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 still remain homeless.

"We urge international aid agencies to help us support the displaced, especially in terms of food and shelter," said Waleed Rashdi, a spokesman for the Aid Agencies Association in Iraq. "Because all the aid is now being sent to the recently-displaced, while other groups are suffering seriously."

Dina Abou Samra, a Middle East analyst at the Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre at the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) agreed with this assessment. "The media has focused much attention on those displaced within the last weeks [victims of sectarian violence]," she said. "But it's urgent that the needs of many other groups of displaced people are also addressed." She went on to say that such people – many of whom have remained homeless for almost three years – be provided with shelter, food and access to clean water and health services.

According to experts, the reasons for the large-scale displacements are myriad. "Displacement has been caused by spontaneous returns [of large ethnic populations to certain areas], general insecurity and sectarian violence," said Abou Samra. "Also, many refugees returning to Iraq are becoming internally displaced, due to reasons like insecurity and the lack of housing and basic services."

Meanwhile, displacement experts say that ongoing sectarian violence has contributed to the increase in the number of displaced families.

The recently-displaced people are primarily located in the provinces of Baghdad, Anbar, Diyala, Najaf and Karbala. According to reports the split between displaced Sunni Arabs and Shi'a Arabs is about 50:50 but they are moving in different directions with the vast majority of Shi'a heading south and Sunnis tending to move to the west and north.

"It's estimated that there are more than one million internally displaced people in Iraq today," said NRC's Dina Abou Samra. "This is in addition to the estimated 100,000 people newly displaced last month."

"To this number we must also add all the people trying to flee to neighbouring countries, for whom there are no official statistics," said NCCI spokesman Cedric Turlan. "There are hundreds of thousands of Iraqis in Jordan and Syria, and it seems that Egypt has also begun taking in large numbers."

Displaced from 2003 still homeless, say analysts

[Al-khiyal]

Iraqi Prime Minister-designate Nuri Kamel al-Maliki said on Tuesday that the interior and defence ministries in the country's new cabinet are to be given to political figures who are independent of the main political blocs or sectarian militias.

Speaking at a press conference, al-Maliki said that the line-up of the new Iraqi cabinet would be announced either later on Tuesday or on Wednesday but refused to give the names of would-be ministers.

He said that political blocs have agreed on 90 per cent of the ministries, including sovereignty ministries and other key portfolios.

Responding to a question about the interior and defence ministries, al-Maliki said that those two portfolios were to be given to independent politicians.

'The interior and defense ministries will remain outside of the (political bloc-based) quota circle and away from the competition between the political blocs,' he said.....

Independent candidates to take Iraq defence, interior ministries