VOICES NEWSLETTER (NOVEMBER 2003)

Iraq: insecurity and injustice prevail
‘We will be seen as puppets’
Land abuse
UN resolution
Detainees double
News from the U.S.
The many forgotten victims
Law against war
‘A catalogue of killings’
Media mayhem
Reconstruction or rip-off?
Drop the debt
Making a killing
Re-hiring Ba’athist spies
Crisis for Iraqi women
Crisis in security
Resistance attacks
My brother's living hell
Speaking tour of voices US activist

Download a PDF version of the newsletter

Iraq: insecurity and injustice prevail

‘Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq... would have incurred incalculable political and human costs... There was no viable ‘exit strategy’... Had we gone the invasion route, the US could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land.’

Not the insights of a seasoned anti-war campaigner, rather the words of George Bush Snr, in his 1998 book ‘A World Transformed’, examining the impact of his own attack on Iraq in 1991.

Like father, like son maybe, but it’s unfortunate the currently presiding George B didn’t have a look on the family bookshelf. Now, six months on from his declaration that major combat operations were over in Iraq, what would a ‘state of the nation’ report consist of? An almost complete lack of personal and communal security, daily civilian and military deaths, the re-employment of Saddam’s ruthless intelligence agents, the imminent changes to the ‘Oil for Food’ programme (with massive implications for health and nutrition, New York Times, 13 Oct), the extreme vulnerability of the civilian infrastructure (the UN, IMF and World Bank estimate $36 billion is needed ‘for medium-term reconstruction’ (IRIN, 23 Oct), not to mention the massive quantities of unexploded ordnance littering the land, the environmental hazards of depleted uranium, the international corporate invasion of the economy and the terrible shadow of colossal, ‘odious’, debt...

The future looks far from bright for the people of Iraq. Which makes it all the more imperative that we continue, in whatever ways possible, to keep their lives and needs central to any debates about the future of the country, while not letting the British and American administrations forget the lethal consequences of their illegal, immoral sanctions regime, invasion and occupation.

One thing is clear: the US/UK presence in Iraq is part of the problem and not part of the solution - the speedy establishment of a participatory democracy is key to securing a sustainable future for Iraq.

Humanitarian relief?

Other countries to suffer... As we go to press, the Dept. for International Develop-ment has announced that aid to ‘middle-income’ countries will be substantially cut to pay for reconstruction in Iraq. Such countries include many badly affected by poverty in Latin America, North Africa and Central Asia. A number of large charities have written to Tony Blair reminding him of undertakings he gave that money would not be redirected away from other prog-rammes to pay for Iraq. (Guardian, 23 Oct).

Missing millions: Moreover, Christian Aid claims that the Coalition Provisional Auth-ority in Iraq has 'failed to account for billions of dollars allocated for rebuilding the country' (AP, 23 Oct). The money consists of transfers from the oil-for-food account, Saddam's frozen assets and Iraq's oil sales. Christian Aid's international director told AP that the failure was ‘little short of scandalous...This is Iraqi money [and] the people of Iraq must know where it is going.’

What is the current situation? It’s telling that we have to report a lack of information on the humanitarian situation on Iraq. This is partly a result of the withdrawal of aid workers after the UN bombing in August. Although reports of improve-ments in electricity, water and sewage are beginning to emerge, the emphasis is on reaching ‘pre-war levels’, i.e. a sanctions-ravaged infrastructure and very poor levels of public health.

‘we will be seen as puppets’

The status of the Governing Council

On 1 September Iraq’s ‘Governing Council’ – the group of 25 Iraqis appointed by the US to be the front men and women for the occupation - appointed a 25-member ‘cabinet’. US viceroy Paul Bremer gushed that ‘as the new ministers settled into their new positions, “the advisers from the coalition will not only yield authority, we will thrust authority”’ (Guardian, 3 September).

However, noting that ‘the ministers will have little real power’ the Independent’s Justin Huggler concluded that - like the Council itself - the ministers ‘appear to be a public relations exercise to reassure Iraqis that America does plan to hand power over to an Iraqi government’ (2 September).

Events on the ground seem to bear out Huggler’s assessment:
- On 24 August the Washington Post reported that the recruitment of members of Saddam Hussein’s intelligence services was taking place ‘despite sometimes adamant objections by members of the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council.’
- After Turkey agreed to send 10,000 troops to Iraq (as a quid pro quo for an $8.5bn US loan and a US commitment to take action against PKK guerillas based in northern Iraq) council member Mahmoud Othman ‘accused the United States of ignoring the wishes of the Iraqi Governing Council’ (Independent, 8 October). Othman told the Independent that “The [Council] does not have much power and if you don’t have real authority you lack credibility. We will be seen by Iraqis as puppets.” According to AP the Council ‘agreed on a resolution … oppos[ing] the deployment of Turkish troops’ but – according to Othman – ‘US pressure kept them from releasing it.’ In this one instance the US may be forced to scrap its plans as Iraqi tribal leaders warn of possible violence if Turkish troops are deployed (AP, 20 Oct), and the Turkish government arrest scores of protestors demonstrating against the deployment (AFP, 19 October).
- In September when the US announced a series of new laws that ‘effectively put [Iraq] up for sale’ (see briefing). Treasury Secretary John Snow was keen to stress these were “the proposals, ideas, and the concepts of the Governing Council. The Governing Council was very clear on that: “These are our ideas”’ – a claim the Independent’s leader writer derided as ‘as plausible as any made during the war by Mohammed al-Sahhaf, Saddam Hussein’s spokesman who was dubbed “Comical Ali”’ (22 Sept). In reality events were follow-ing a script drafted by USAID before the war began (see Wall Street Journal, 1 May)

Interim trade minister Ali Allawi later told the International Herald Tribune that Iraq ‘now face[s] the prospect of free-market fundamentalism’ and that ‘a plan based on ideology, not economics is, of course, naturally wrong.’ (13 October).

- On 1 October ‘in a testy exchange with the occupation administrator, L. Paul Bremer III, [the Council] challenged an American decision to spend $1.2 billion to train 35,000 Iraqi police officers in Jordan when training could be done in Iraq for a fraction of the cost’ (New York Times, 4 October). ‘[F]ive council members said in interviews that the [Council] opposed the plan. “If we had voted, a majority would have rejected it,’ Council member Naseer K. Chadirji told the paper. More generally, Council members told the NYT that ‘the lack of transparency and competition [in awarding ‘reconstruction’ contracts]… may be encouraging corruption.’ Chadirji told the paper ‘As the Governing Council we are in a very weak position. We don’t have the right to investigate these contracts.’

Given these realities it is perhaps hardly surprising that, as Huggler observes, the council is already ‘deepy unpopular with ordinary Iraqis and [that] its members hide away in heavily guarded offices.’ (Independent, 2 September).

Land abuse

Iraq’s farmers will not be immune to the neo-liberalism that looks set to sweep across the country.

Sawsan al-Sharify, Iraq's deputy agriculture minister, told the Financial Times that ‘Subsidies will be reduced by more than half next year...Within four years they will be reduced to zero.’ (27 September).

However ‘farmers fear the removal of large subsidies for seeds, fertilisers and pesticides, coupled with the fallout of war, could drive them out of business... Farmers will be forced to improve productivity or lease land to foreign investment she says.’

Meanwhile, incidents reminiscent of the Occupied Territories have been reported by the Independent: “US soldiers driving bulldozers, with jazz blaring from loudspeakers, have uprooted ancient groves of date palms as well as orange and lemon trees in central Iraq as part of a new policy of collective punishment of farmers who do not give information about guerrillas attacking US troops.’ (12 Oct).

Over 50 families lost their livelihoods as a result. ‘The children of one woman who owned some fruit trees lay down in front of a bulldozer but were dragged away, according to eyewitnesses...They said that one American soldier broke down and cried during the operation. When a reporter from the newspaper Iraq Today attempted to take a photograph of the bulldozers at work a soldier grabbed his camera and tried to smash it.’

UN resolution

The facts about the new resolution

On the 16 October – after six weeks of what The Guardian described as ‘one of the most acrimonious diplomatic wrangles in recent years’ – the UN security council unanimously passed UN Resolution 1511. The new resolution ‘authorizes a multinational force under unified command…to contribute to the maintenance of security and stability in Iraq’ and ‘urges’ Member States to contribute both military forces ‘under this United Nations mandate’ and ‘financial assistance to Iraq’.

However ‘no sooner had Russia, France, Germany and Pakistan raised their hands in support, eliciting whoops of diplomatic triumph by the coalition, than they said they did not like the text and that they would contribute no extra troops or money’ (FT, 18 October) – the main point of the exercise from the US perspective.

One UN diplomat told the FT that the new resolution was a “prime UN Security Council product: a text on which everyone agrees, but no one agrees what it means.” Indeed there was not even agreement as to whether the resolution provided a UN mandate for US and British forces in Iraq: the US claimed it did ‘but other UN diplomats disagreed, insisting that the occupying forces remained just that. In protest at the confusion Pakistan, seen as a potential troop contributor, announced it could not send forces.’ In a rare display of backbone Kofi Annan stated, not only that the US would remain an occupying power but that ‘as long as there’s an occupation, the resistance will grow’ (IHT, 15 Oct).

1511 also...
- ‘determines’ that the Iraqi ‘Governing Council’ and its ministers ‘are the principal bodies of the Iraqi interim administration, which …. embodies the sovereignty of the State of Iraq … until an internationally recognized, representative government is established’ – a ‘determination’ that makes little sense given that the US maintains both military control and ultimate political authority in the country.
- and ‘invites’ the Council to produce a ‘timetable and a programme for the drafting of a new constitution for Iraq and for the holding of democratic elections under that constitution’, to be submitted to the UN Security Council for review by 15 December at the latest.

Detainees double

Since the summer the number of detainees reported to be held in camps in Iraq without charge or access to legal advice or families has doubled to 10,000, although the notorious Camp Cropper closed in early October. Where most of the detainees are now is not clear.

Nearly 4000 have been classified as ‘security detainees’ in the first steps the CPA has made to classify prisoners. Delays in classificiation has been the reason given why the majority of the prisoners have not been dealt with. Some have only been released after many weeks in custody. Over 5000 are ‘suspected criminals’ and 300 ‘enemy pris-oners of war’. Individual stories suggest that many people have been detained.

As well as serious concerns over the conditions in which prisoners are kept, concerns are mounting as to the nature of the interrogations carried out in the name of the war on terror. A Newsweek reporter spoke to members of the US Navy who explained how ‘the US government and military capitalises on the dubious status (as sovereign states) of Afghanistan, Diego Garcia, Guantanamo Bay, Iraq and aircraft carriers to avoid certain legal questions about rough interrogations...“What’s going to stop an impatient soldier, in a supralegal situation, from whacking one nameless, dehumanized shopkeeper among many?”’ (22 August). The new term is ‘torture lite’ (Observer Magazine, 19 Oct).

One incident in September: ‘American troops in helicopters swooped down on this remote sheepherding village in the desert and detained nearly all the men, one as old as 81, one as young as 13. A month after the raid, apparently aimed at prevent-ing terrorists from slipping across the border from Saudi Arabia, only two of the 79 captives have been freed.’ (AP, 23 Oct.)

voices has produced a postcard to be sent to Tony Blair: Human Rights...Occupation Wrongs? Contact the office to order.

News from the U.S.

The US Justice Department has filed a $20,000 lawsuit against our sister group in the States, Voices in the Wilderness, for taking medicines and school supplies to Iraq.

In late September Voices US filed an Answer and Counter Claim. They are refusing to pay the fines, and instead are pledging to raise $20,000 for continued relief for people in Iraq. Voices US says: ‘Our response to the US Justice Department challenges the right of the US government to punish anyone for bringing human-itarian aid to civilians in Iraq or elsewhere. We are asking for a jury trial, for a declaration that the sanctions violated international law, for an injunction prohibiting the government from trying to punish anyone else for providing humanitarian aid, and for damages that will go to pay for medicines for the people of Iraq.’

Meanwhile, Voices people have established a house in Baghdad from which they will pursue projects in the country. Two activists were recently banned from a Baghdad press conference held by the commander of the US-led forces in Iraq for raising the case of US troops shooting at an Iraqi family in August, killing the husband and three children.

Finally, as we enter the month of Ramadan, Voices US is inviting individuals and groups to observe all or part of Ramadan in solidarity with our Muslim sisters and brothers. There is a list of practical suggestions on their website.

* Voices US website
* Contact Voices US if you would like to donate towards their $20,000 target
* Sign the on-line petition to John Ashcroft
* Ramzi Kysia from Voices US, who has been in Iraq for 2 years, will be on a UK speaking tour in November

‘a catalogue of killings’

On the 14th October the Guardian ran a piece entitled ‘War without end. A catalogue of killings in Iraq’.

Shockingly, the piece included not a single killing of an Iraqi civilian by the occupying forces and only 15 of the 84 separate incidents involved the death of anyone other than a US/UK soldier.

By listing only the deaths of US/UK soldiers and not their killings an erroneous impression was created: of innocent bystanders rather than an occupying army. In reality the US/UK military occupation is part of the problem in Iraq, not its solution.

Here we recall just a handful of the killings that the Guardian failed to mention.
April 28: Thirteen civilians – including a thirteen-year-old boy - are killed when US troops open fire into a crowd of demonstrators in Fallujah. Ahmed al-Ani (14) - whose uncle Walid was killed in the massacre - tells a Reuters reporter: ‘I hate Americans. I want revenge. I will wait, I will join a group, and, one day, I will kill Americans.’ (Regime Unchanged by Milan Rai, Chapter 22).

June 26: 12-year-old Mohammed al-Kubaisi is shot by US soldiers after climbing onto the roof of his parents’ roof to sleep. Neighbours attempt to take the wounded boy to hospital but are stopped at a military checkpoint. Unable to obtain treatment, Mohammed bleeds to death. Source: Boston Globe, 4 August.

July 10: Uday Ahmed (24) is shot by a US soldier as he crosses an auto repair yard holding a car’s ignition distributor ‘a metal object the size and shape of a hand grenade.’ According to Ali Hassan – who runs an outdoor falafel stand about 20 feet from where Uday was shot – Uday ‘doubled over bleeding and then glanced up. At that moment a second shot came from the roof of the police station. It hit him, and he dropped. There was blood everywhere.’ (Boston Globe, 4 Aug). According to the Globe the Commander of the 82 Airborne Division - whose soldiers were posted at the police station - ‘declined to discuss the case’.

August 7: Adel abd al-Kerim and his three children Haider (18), Ia (16) and Mervit (8) are killed when ‘US troops opened fire on [their car] as they hurried home to beat the curfew…Survivors said they were given no warning…Two other men were shot and killed in similar but separate incidents’ (Guardian, 12 August).

September 1: Farah Fadhil (18) is killed when US soldiers throw a grenade through the window of her apartment. According to the Observer (7 September) Farah’s death ‘was slow and agonising. Her legs had been shredded, her hands burnt and punctured with splinters of metal, suggesting that the bright high-school student had covered her face to shield it from the explosion.’

US troops ‘spray’ Farah’s apartment with bullets and Marwan Hassan, hearing the noise, ventures out from another building to look for his brother Qasam. Though unarmed Marwan is shot and killed by US troops. According to the Observer ‘the coalition troops who killed [Farah and Marwan] did not even bother to record details of the raid with the coalition military press office. The killings were that unremarkable.’

September 18: ‘Sa’ad Muhammad Sultan, a 35-year-old interpreter and father of two children, [i]s killed [by] a single shot through the heart when a US soldier fired at the car in which he was travelling between Tikrit and Mosul. Sa’ad was accompanying Italian diplomat Pietro Cordone, cultural adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). Their car was shot at from a US military vehicle travelling in the same direction – the soldier who fired apparently did not want to be overtaken. Asked about US soldiers’ reaction Mr Cordone commented “ ...they continued driving as if nothing had happened..”.’ (Source: Amnesty International press release, 25 Sept).

On 21 October Human Rights Watch published a detailed 56-page report Hearts and Minds: Postwar Civilian Casualties in Iraq on the killing of civilians by US forces in Iraq. HRW was able to confirm 20 such killings in Baghdad alone between May 1 and 30 September and found ‘credible reports of 94 civilian deaths in [the capital] involving questionable legal circumstances that warrant investigation.’ The precise number of Iraqi civilians killed by US soldiers since May 1 is ‘unknown’ the report notes.

Six Months on: 19 September was the half year anniversary of the start of the invasion of Iraq. voices organised a memorial event for all those killed as a result - Iraqi civilians and soldiers, UK and US soldiers, journalists and civilian/NGO staff - and to tell the stories of a tiny fraction of these individuals. It called for the US/UK to be held responsible for their criminal invasion and demanded an end to the occupation.

At that date it was estimated that between 6,000 - 8,000 Iraqi civilians, 13,500 Iraqi soldiers (at a miminum), 340 coalition forces, about 17 journalists and about 25 NGO/aid or UN workers had died.

Media mayhem

On 23 September, in a desperate attempt to control the hearts and minds of Iraqis, the Governing Council banned 2 major Arabic media outlets from government offices and news conferences for two weeks.

Al Jazeera and al Arabiya were accused of ‘encouraging violence against the US military and Iraqi officials and of promoting sectarian divisions’. (Guardian, 24 Sept). Additionally, the Council have issued a list of ‘do’s and ‘don’ts’ that all the media must abide by. (Independent, 7 Oct). The same report said that ‘television “news” [is] a miserable affair that often fails to make any mention of the growing violence...’. The 300 plus journalists working on US-run TV and radio stations have ‘gone on strike twice for more pay and complain of censorship.’ TV is run by SAIC, a US company that has close links to the Pentagon and is subcontracted to train the Iraqi army.

Index on Censorhsip questions how an independent media can be cultivated when access to information is so often blocked (and journalists often themselves targeted) by the Coalition. For more detailed analysis see www.indexonline.org.

Reconstruction or rip-off?

What is the reality for the Iraqi people behind the rhetoric of reconstruction?

On 8 September George Bush announced that he would be requesting $87bn to spend on Iraq, Afghanistan and the ‘war on terrorism’ – additional money to the $62.5bn worth of extra military spending Congress approved in April.

Bush’s billions
Of this $87bn, roughly $71bn was for Iraq: $51n for military operations and $20.3bn for ‘reconstruction’. However $5bn of the $20.3bn allocated for ‘reconstruction’ was actually earmarked for setting up a new Iraqi army, and ‘civilian defence’ and police forces - not for rebuilding Iraq’s shattered infrastructure. Of the remainder, $5.8bn was for rebuilding Iraq’s electricity system, $3.7 bn for water and sewage, $2.1 bn for the oil sector, $800mn for telecommunications and $900mn for hospitals and healthcare (Washington Post, 18 September).

The White House estimates that ‘rebuilding Iraq could cost as much as $75bn, even without counting military spending’ (FT, 9 September).

Too much … too little
To what extent these monies will benefit ordinary Iraqis remains unclear. They will certainly benefit US corporations - especially those with close links to the Bush administration.

US Treasury International Under-secretary John Taylor told the FT that ‘[m]uch of the US financial contribution to Iraqi reconstruction will be earmarked for American companies’ (18 October). Meanwhile, of the $4bn a month currently being spent on the military occupation (separate from reconstruction funds), ‘as much as a third is going to the private contractors who have flooded into the country’ a ‘flow of money that will greatly increase if Congress approves Bush’s request’ (Washington Post, 9 October).
In a long letter to the Director of Management and Budget (DMB) dated 26 September US Representative Henry Waxman charged that ‘too much money appears to be going to Halliburton and Bechtel for too little work and too few opportunities for Iraqis’ and that ‘virtually no information of any kind is being provided about how taxpayer dollars are currently being spent in Iraq.’

‘gold-plating’
According to Waxman – who spent six months investigating the activities of Halliburton and Bechtel in Iraq - ‘rather than seeking funding for low-cost solutions based on inexpensive local Iraqi labor, the Administration appears to be requesting huge dollar amounts for complex projects that will be awarded to well-connected US contractors operating at expensive premiums.’

Members of the Governing Council told Waxman’s staff that costs for many reconstruction contracts could be reduced by 90% if the projects were awarded to local Iraqi companies rather than large US corporations.

In one instance, US engineers estimated that it would cost $15mn to bring a cement plant in northern Iraq back to Western production standards. Unable to afford this, the US general in charge of the area gave the project to local Iraqis who were able to get the plant up and running again for $80,000.

One Senator found dozens of ‘gold plated’ cost estimates for contracts, including a $3.6mn contract for 400 hand-held radios and 200 satellite phones (an average of $6000 each) (Independent, 5 October).

‘absurd’ deadlines.
'American officials in Baghdad [have been] offering contracts totaling hundreds of millions of dollars, but giving companies as little as three days to submit competing bids’ (19 October, New York Times). Procurement experts told the paper that such ‘extremely short deadlines’ - which one expert described as “absurd” – ‘could stifle open competition, favor well-connected contractors at the expense of outsiders and lead to higher costs.’

An American businessman, who would not allow his name to be used, said that the US ‘was doling out contracts worth hundreds of thousands of dollars by simply telephoning favored companies and announcing, “I have a contract for you” ’ (New York Times, 4 October).

Bengali, not Arabic.
According to Waxman ‘of the 115 discrete projects described by the CPA [in materials submitted to back Bush’s $20.3bn request] fewer than 25 mention any employment opportunities for Iraqis.’ Meanwhile according to US officials ‘security conditions have forced companies to turn to south Asian labour to implement contracts from prison-building to catering for US troops’ (FT, 14 October). ‘No entry signs at the back of the coalition’s Baghdad headquarters are in Urdu and Bengali, not Arabic’ (Economist, 11 October).

At an economic forum in Jordan the co-ordinator of Bechtel’s reconstruction work in Iraq, Gregory Huger, told AFP that the company was “working primarily with Iraqi contractors … since September 26, we have given 128 contracts of which 102 have been granted to Iraqi companies” (12 October). However several Iraqi businessmen attending the event told the agency that reconstruction was “very slow” and that the ‘subcontracts given to Iraqi firms were very marginal’.

The numerical majority of subcontracts awarded by Bechtel do seem to be being awarded to Iraqis but what proportion of the $1bn that USAID gave the company for reconstruction reaches them remains unclear. According to Huger, ‘most of the contracts given to Iraqi firms are worth between 100,000 dollars and one million dollars.’

Jobs for the Bunnias
To be sure not everyone is doing badly. ‘[Bechtel’s] largest and most prominent Iraqi subcontractor … belongs to the Bunnia family, which grew immensely wealthy under the former government and was known for lavishing gifts, especially luxury cars, on members of the Hussein family. Looking at a list of companies that received subcontracts from Becthel, [Council Member Mahmoud] Othman … said he recognized at least a half-dozen that had profited from close relations with Mr. Hussein or members of his family’ (New York Times, 4 October).

Promises, promises.
Waxman also alleges that the ‘waste and gold-plating … [is] actually holding back the pace of reconstruction in Iraq’ (Washington Post, 9 October)

To be sure, the technicians at the Baghdad South power plant were still waiting for new parts to fix their geriatric plant on 25 September, almost five months after George Bush declared ‘major combat operations’ over. Senior operations engineer Ahmed Ali Shiha told the Washington Post that ‘repeated appeals to Bechtel and the US military had not yielded any significant new equipment. “All we have received from them are promises,” he said.’

Drop the debt

After months with no clear statement regarding Iraq’s colossal debt and war reparations burden (estimated to be in excess of $150 bn), the Foreign Office has finally gone on the record – sort of.
odious debt.

According to a 30 July document from the FCO’s Iraq Policy Unit, Iraq: Frequently Asked Questions, ‘a change in government does not affect a country’s international debt obligations.’ In other words, the Government does not recognise the notion of ‘odious’ debt.

According to Oxfam ‘most, perhaps all’ of Iraq’s debt is ‘odious’ i.e. it was lent to a dictatorship, for purposes that did not benefit ordinary Iraqis, by creditors who knew that the money was financing war and human rights abuses.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Iraqis appear to be unanimous in rejecting the notion that they should pay Saddam’s odious debts (Iraqi views on foreign debt and reparations, October 2003, Jubilee Iraq).

Fair & sustainable?
The FCO claims that ‘the UK will seek a fair and sustainable solution to Iraq’s debt.’

However, whilst, ‘the Paris and London clubs will no doubt belatedly negotiate some sort of rescheduling and writing down of, respectively, Iraq’s sovereign and commercial-bank debt …they will almost certainly do so on what lenders judge to be Iraq’s ability to pay – which will no doubt be on the high side – not on the rightness of its having to do so. That is not good enough’ (The Economist, 18 Oct). It adds, ‘There is an over-whelming case, both in terms of economic expediency and justice, for writing off most of Iraq’s debts, and doing so fast,’

Cancel the debt
The Jubilee Iraq report’s author Justin Alexander said ‘Iraqis identify the debt as one of the most critical issues facing them. Failure to achieve a just resolution would prevent economic revival and could even threaten the country’s political stability. Iraqis insist that they are not responsible for Saddam’s debts and do not need debt ‘forgiveness’, rather it is the creditors who financed Saddam’s reign of terror who should be seeking forgiveness from Iraqis. As one Iraqi explained to me ‘When Saddam executed people, he used to charge their families for the bullets used – this is precisely what the creditor countries who financed Saddam are asking of Iraqis today.’’

Making a killing

As the corporate invasion of Iraq gathers pace (see briefing Iraq for Sale: The Privatisation of Iraq) voices examines some of companies who stand to profit. Deborah Avant, a political scientist at George Washington University and an expert in the need breed of military companies estimates ‘that as many as 1 in 10 Americans deployed in Iraq and Kuwait – perhaps 20,000 – are contractors’ (WP, 9 Oct).

DynCorp
The State Department ‘plan[s] to spend $800 million to build a large training facility for a new Iraqi police force. Management fees alone would run to $26 million a month, while 1,500 police trainers would cost $240,000 per year, or $20,000 each per month. DynCorp … is likely to get the contract.’ (Washington Post, 9October). In Columbia Dyncorp is involved in the aerial spraying of coca plants – and anything else that gets in the way – with the powerful herbicide glyphosate (FT, 11 August).

Caterpillar
A Caterpillar spokesman told the Post that ‘500 to 600 of his company’s machines are already in Iraq [and that] he expects Caterpillar to receive many more orders for bulldozers and pipe layers as private companies win contracts to rebuild Iraq’s sewer systems, water-purification plants and roads. The bulldozers used by soldiers in Iraq range in price from $100,000 to nearly $1 million.’ (WP, 9 October). Caterpillar infamously supply the military bulldozers used by Israel to demolish Palestinian houses, one of which was used to murder US peace activist Rachel Corrie earlier this year.

Dijla Telecommunications Corp (DTC)
Majority stakeholder in one of three consortia awarded licences to bring commercial mobile phone services to Iraq. Headed by Ali Shawkat, son of Mudhar Shawkat, media director for Pentagon-favourite Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress. Chalabi himself has a “small” stake in the consortium, according to Mr Shawkat. (Financial Times, 7 October).

* Visit Jubilee Iraq and read Oxfam’s report A Fresh Start for Iraq: The case for debt relief
* Get hold of voices updated Drop the Debt postcards for your mailing or local event.
* Hold a non-commercial screening of Mark Thomas Debt Collector in your local area - contact the office
* Use the Corporate Auction action pack - contact the office

Crisis in security

‘Iraq under the US-led occupation is a fearful, lawless and broken place, where murder rates have rocketed … police are seen as thugs and thieves, and the American and British forces as distant rulers, more concerned with protecting their troops than providing security to ordinary Iraqis,’ Suzanne Goldenberg reports (‘A land ruled by chaos’, Guardian, 4 October).

‘no information’
Robert Fisk reported that, ‘in Baghdad, up to 70 corpses - of Iraqis killed by gunfire – are brought to the mortuaries every day’, while in Najaf ‘the cemetery authorities record the arrival of up to 20 victims of violence a day’ (Independent on Sunday, 14 September).

‘Some of the dead were killed in family feuds, in looting, or revenge killings. Others … gunned down by US troops at checkpoints or in the increasingly vicious “raids” carried out by American forces in the suburbs of Baghdad and the Sunni cities to the north.

‘1000 killed a week’
‘If you count the Najaf dead as typical of just two or three other major cities,’ Fisk notes, ‘and if you add on the daily Baghdad death toll and multiply by seven, almost 1,000 Iraqi civilians are being killed every week - and that may well be a conservative figure.’

Consistent with Fisk’s report, Iraq Body Count (23 September) has estimated – using reports based on records at the Baghdad city morgue - that from 14 April to 31 August ‘when corrected for pre-war death rates … [there were] at least 1,519 excess violent deaths in Baghdad’.

Manifest failure
The US/UK are ‘manifestly failing’ to fulfil their duties - under the Geneva Conventions and Hague Regulations - to ensure public order and protect the civilian population, IBC notes, ‘compounding the death and destruction already unleashed by their invasion of Iraq.’
www.iraqbodycount.org

Re-hiring Ba’athist spies

‘While seemingly intent on obliterating the symbols of Saddam’, the occupation authorities have shown ‘little compunc-tion in rehabilitating the real instru-ments of his brutal control’, having ‘come around to the view that [they] cannot rule effectively without the secur-ity and intelligence services’, Suzanne Goldenberg reports (Guardian, 9 Oct). This is taking place despite US viceroy Paul Bremer’s 16 May Order #1 on the ‘De-Ba’athification of Iraqi Society’.

Unusual compromises
The US led occupation authorities have ‘begun a covert campaign to recruit and train agents [from] the once-dreaded intelligence service to help identify resistance to American forces’ – a recruitment that ‘US officials’ described as ‘extensive’ (Washington Post, 24 August).

Whilst these same officials ‘acknowledge the sensitivity of cooperating with a force that embodies the ruthlessness’ of Hussein’s regime and the ‘pitfalls in relying on an instrument loathed by most Iraqis and renowned across the Arab world for its casual use of torture, fear, intimidation, rape and imprisonment’ they assert that ‘an urgent need…has forced unusual compromises’ the Post reports.

‘watching everyone’
According to Goldenberg, ‘diplomats and other officers of the former Ba’athist intelligence apparatus claim that the return to active duty of members of Saddam’s security services extends to the former head of the Mukhabarat [the regime’s foreign intelligence service] himself, Tahir Jalil Haboosh.’
Goldenberg met a former colonel in military intelligence who is thinking of going back to work – this time for the Americans. “We were watching everyone,’ he says. “Now they will ask us to visit them at the main military base to fill in forms, and say we are no longer loyal to the Ba’ath party. That’s so easy.”’
‘Almost all of the bureaucrats at the information ministry have done very nicely for themselves since the war … [and] other former servants of the security service have found jobs in the police where, it is widely believed, they are indulging in the same brutal practices they employed before the war; the only change being that they feel freer to extort bribes’ (Guardian, 9 October).

For more information on the above see JNV’s anti-war briefing ‘Iraq Renazified’ and chapters 15 and 20 of Milan Rai’s ‘Regime Unchanged’.

Crisis for Iraqi women

In July, Human Rights Watch (HRW) published a report, Climate of Fear cataloguing the growing sexual violence against women and the resulting ‘imprisonment’ of women and girls in their homes.

Much of the violence is committed by criminal gangs, given free rein by the lack of security. Other attacks are from those closer to home.The rise in ‘honour’ killings is itself fuelled by the increase in violence as families seek to restore their ‘honour’, if a woman has been violated, by killing her.

Suzanne Goldenberg spoke to victims: “for Asma, an engineer in her twenties, the attack was utterly random. She was abducted on May 18 from a crowded street in a suburb of Baghdad where she was shopping with her mother, younger sister, and an adult male cousin.’ She was repeatedly raped. ‘It is unclear why she was targeted, but she was admonished for wearing trousers and for failing to cover her hair. The next day she was encased in hijab - the traditional headscarf - and dropped off near her parents' home. She has barely spoken since.’ (The Guardian, 20 Oct)

Goldenberg found that, ‘the author-ities are reluctant to acknowledge a problem. The police force, widely viewed as incompetent and corrupt, is overwhelmed, and other officials show little inclination to sympathy.’ HRW states that, ‘the failure of the occupying power to protect women and girls from violence, and redress it when it occurs, has both immediate and long-term negative implications for their participation in post-war life in Iraq.’ A representative of the CPA’s Ministry of the Interior told the New York Times, ‘we don’t do women’ (16 Sept).

Patricia Hewitt, UK Minister for Women and Equality, has been strangely silent on this issue. Perhaps it is her other role as Trade and Industry Secretary that stops her raising the alarm about the dangers to women in Iraq. However, she has recently announced the establishment of an ‘Iraqi women's higher council’ which will be ‘about building a new civil society in Iraq, after 35 years when we know women were suppressed, and ensuring women have a voice in Iraq.’ She does not acknowledge the chaos the occupation has caused and the failure of the CPA to protect Iraqi women and their long-held postition of having the highest number of professional and working women in the Middle East.

Act Together - a group of UK-based Iraqi and non-Iraqi women, are working on women’s issues: information@acttogether.org, www.acttogether.org

Resistance attacks

‘US soldiers are now dying in a much larger area of Iraq, and at the hands of a much more diverse group of Iraqis, than was true two months ago,’ Patrick Cockburn reports (Independent, 19 Oct). ‘The guerrilla attacks on US troops are not very intense – they average about 20 a day – but they are spreading.’

‘significant levels of hostility.’
Whilst US officials continue to publicly blame the attacks on “dead enders, foreign terrorists and criminal gangs” (Donald Rumsfeld) the reality appears to be more complex.

Anonymous ‘defence officials’ told the New York Times that ‘it was a mistake to discount the role of ordinary Iraqis who have little in common with the groups Mr Rumsfeld cited, but whose anger over the American presence appears to be kindling sympathy for those attacking American forces’ and that ‘recent intelligence assessments tend to cast [the conflict in Iraq] mainly as an insurgency in which the key variable will be the role played by ordinary Iraqis’ (17 September).

Recent polling in Iraq by the State Department – which remains classified – found ‘significant levels of hostility to the American presence’ extending ‘well beyond the Sunni heartland of Iraq.’ “To a lot of Iraqis, we’re no longer the guys who threw out Saddam, but the ones who are busting down doors and barging in on their wives and daughters” one of the officials told the paper.

The common enemy.
According to Zaki Chehab – the political editor of the Arabic TV station al-Hayat-LBC – anti-Saddam nationalists, loyalists of the old regime and Iraqi Islamists are all involved in the resistance and while the aspirations of these different groups may be incompatible ‘the focus of each group right now is to fight together against the common enemy – the occupying forces.’ (Guardian, 13 October)

In the back streets of Mosul, soon after the fall of the city Chehab ‘came face to face with a group of armed men, shouting and firing shots in different directions … some introduced themselves as former Ba’athists, others said they belonged to Islamist organisations. Though ideologically worlds apart, they explained that they all took orders from the same committee in the city, which was headed by a group of religious leaders.’ According to Chehab similar relationships exist in Falluja and Samarra.

Wounded in action.
So far over 100 US soldiers have been killed in military action in Iraq since George Bush declared ‘major combat operations’ over on 1 May.

‘The military has never admitted the total number of soldiers injured.... though the figure appears to run into the thousands. At the combat hospital in Balad, one of a handful of military medical centres in Iraq, a total of 1,088 patients were admitted for treatment between May and the end of August. As many as 916 had to be evacuated, although not all suffered combat injuries …

‘One report last month said 6,000 US soldiers had already been evacuated home, of whom more than 1,000 were designated “wounded in action” – twice the toll for the first Gulf War’ (Guardian, 13 October).
How many Iraqis have been killed and injured remains unknown.

US military commanders have drawn up plans to reduce the number of troops in Iraq to 50,000 (from a current total of 130,000) by mid-2005 (Washington Post, October 19th) though whether or not circumstances on the ground will permit this remains to be seen.

My brother’s ‘living hell’

Dr Salih Ibrahim is a Pathologist who has lived and worked in the UK for over 20 years. He told us of the daily difficulties for his family in Iraq.

In August: I am very distressed when I speak with my family in Basrah and Baghdad to hear the horror stories of what they have experienced this summer when temperatures exceed 50oC (compared to 35oC experienced here). They tell me there is no electricity most of the time. Even those who are lucky to have a generator say it was a living hell. One would expect some improvement after over 100 days occupation by a superpower.

My family stress that it is now much worse than during the bombing in March. What are they to do with tens of newspapers, new parties and satellite channels when there is no security, order, power and clean water. How can a prof-essional function properly when his life and those of his loved ones are insecure? People can not thrive without security.

Khalid, my brother in law in Baghdad who told me back in January that he would welcome the Americans when they come, now tells me he regret it. He tells me not to believe the lies the Americans are propagating that the situation is getting better in Iraq. On the contrary, things are worse every day. His 2 teenage girls have not left home for 3 months except when they had to sit their final exams.

In October: Ordinary Iraqis and occupying forces are all living in fear for their lives, and although Iraqis are happy to see the end of Saddam’s era, they know the US/UK are not in Iraq to bring democracy but to plunder their country and impose a set of compliant thugs like Ahmed Chalabi and his cronies. The Iraqis have not forgotten who emboldened Saddam to attack Iran in 1980 slaughtering hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Iraninans, and supplied him with WMD. The US and UK doubled their credit loans to Saddam after the Halabja massacre and US forces in March 1991 allowed him to crush the uprising, and now they mention the mass graves denying their complicity in those crimes. And in the twelve and a half years of the sanctions of mass destruction killing more than a million innocent Iraqis, a crime most foul, our blood is on their hands and elbows.

My family do not want me to visit Iraq and the reason is lack of security Without security people can not thrive.