VOICES NEWSLETTER (February/March 2004)

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Human rights? occupation wrongs
The boy with the bullet in his brain
Indiscriminate killing
The Bush dilemma: democracy vs control?
Iraq’s debts: an odious appointment
‘A catalogue of killings’
The return of the secret police
Private profit
Kathy Kelly: 3 months in prison
women’s rights could be swept away
Resources

Human rights? occupation wrongs

With the Iraqi occupation nearly a year old, concern over mounting human rights violations, and the establishment of such abuses as routine, is growing.

In a briefing to the 60th Session of the UN Commission on Human Rights, in January, Human Rights Watch stated that, ‘the military forces of the Occupying Powers in Iraq have been responsible for human rights and international humanitarian law violations. Those in authority have failed to investigate many of these violations or to hold accountable those responsible,’ as well as failing to provide ‘sufficient protection or redress’.

‘ Violations have related to excessive or indiscriminate use of force by troops resulting in serious harm to civilians, and the failure to equip or train troops adequately for the complex law enforcement tasks of military occupation.’ The US had only completed five investigations as of the beginning of October, in four of which it was concluded ‘that soldiers had operated within official rules of engagement.’

HRW also noted reports of other very serious violations of human rights such as the demolition of homes of relatives of suspected insurgents or former officials in order to punish the families or compel their cooperation, taking family members into custody, effectively as hostages, a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions, and, of course, the extended detention without charge or access to lawyers and family that many thousands are suffering.

We have reports on pages 2 and 5 about some of the numerous killings that the US and UK forces are engaging in, many completely indiscriminately. Meanwhile, the occupiers are failing in their duty under international law to protect civilians; Iraq Body Count estimates that, between April and August last year, 1,500 excess violent deaths occurred in Baghdad alone.

And as the months roll on the general context for long-term human rights protection is becoming less favourable. We have a report on page 6 about how the CIA is recruiting members of Saddam Hussein’s notorious secret intelligence to create a new (but pro-US) police force and another on page 8 regarding the perilous situation for women’s rights.

‘security internees’
'They told me to come back in four months...my son has already been in there for four months and he has been charged with nothing! It was easier to get a visit under Saddam.’ (Occupation Watch, 28 Nov)

Such a story is common. Many do not even know their relative’s fate as families may be unable to find out the prisoner’s number which is necessary in order to get a visit. They often only get information from others who have been released.

The number of detainees is unknown. In January the Guardian reported that the CPA admitted to holding 9,000 in prisons. Most suspect the figure to be more like 20,000, but some suggest it’s even higher.

While Saddam has been granted Prisoner of War status, and various rights under the Geneva Convention, those who worked for him, and many thousands of others who didn’t, exist in a legal vacuum. They have been termed ‘security internees’ in the same way that those in Guantanamo are called ‘enemy combatants’ - new wording, new loophole.

Many of the top Ba’ath party members are thought to be held at Baghdad International Airport while others are in Abu Gharib, the infamous prison of the Ba’ath regime (Guardian, 1 Jan). But there are many prisons being used throughout the country so families do not know where their relatives could be. Iraqi lawyers working to free people are having little success with those held by the US, although for those arrested by the Iraqi police, it is proving easier. (Occupation Watch, 28 Nov.)

The Christian Peacemaker Team was able to visit Camp Bucca in Umm Qasr, which did have an open visiting policy and was also being visited by the Red Cross. However, the Red Cross have reduced their acitivities due to the security situation and do not seem to have access to all the camps.The CPT has reported many instances of mistreatment and torture within the prisons (www.cpt.org).

With the Governing Council’s announcement that special tribunals will deal with those once high in Saddam’s regime, as well as Saddam himself, without granting the defendants access to lawyers, the parallels with Guantanamo are deepening, although the fate of those inside Iraq and Afghanistan is receiving far less attention.

American promises that detainees will be ‘categorised’ and dealt with are barely showing results while an expected amnesty in early January yielded only 60 released prisoners - who were driven away fromthe prison, out of reach of both press and families (Guardian, 9 Jan).

house demolitions
Reports are increasing of the US demolition of houses ‘as a form of collective punishment or deterrence’ (Amnesty International, 20 Nov). Amnesty reported one incident in which US soldiers ordered a family out of a farmhouse south of Baghdad and later that day, it was destroyed by F-16 bombers. ‘This was apparently carried out in retaliation for an attack a few days earlier by Iraqi armed groups against a US convoy.’ Six men had been arrested outside the farmhouse and weapons were said to have been found inside. The destruction was not ‘absolute military necessity’, said Amnesty. Article 33 of the fourth Geneva Convention states, ‘reprisals against protected persons and their property are prohibited’ and Article 53 also prohibits destruction of personal property.

In December, Reuters reported other cases, one in which the troops said they wouldn’t destroy the whole house but ‘just the front, as a show of force’. The front was brought down with a bulldozer (3 Dec). The son, who had some weapons in the house, was captured soon afterwards without resistance. In another incident of ‘act first, ask questions later’, a US military official was reported to say that ‘if we trace somebody back to a specific safe house, we are going to destroy that facility.’

Amnesty also points out that the UN Committee Against Torture considers that house demolition can amount to ‘cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishement’. Amnesty is also calling for compensation for those families affected.

The boy with the bullet in his brain

A report by Jo Wilding

Former Voices delegate Jo Wilding has been back in Iraq since November, from where she is writing regular reports, touring with a small circus for children and assisting grassroots Iraqi NGOs. You can read her reports on-line at www.wildfirejo.org.uk or receive her reports via e-mail by sending a message to wildfirejo-subscribe@yahoo groups.com with ‘subscribe’ in the title.

November 26: Saif, who used to work in the hotel I used to stay in, asked me to come and meet his neighbours. Their son Baqer was shot by US soldiers and survived, but with a 9mm bullet lodged in his head. The CPA promised to help with his treatment and medicines but has given the family nothing: not money, medicines, treatment nor assistance with travelling out of Iraq to hospital in Jordan or beyond.

Baqer is four and a half. On May 26th the family were going to visit relatives. They were waiting for a taxi when there was an explosion. US troops started shooting. Baqer fell. He was taken to Al-Yermouk, the main trauma hospital for south and west Baghdad. He suffered injury to his left cerebrum and his left 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th cranial nerves causing partial nerve palsy which have impaired his sight, hearing, speech and walking. Whenever he tries to get off someone’s lap, he lists and staggers and falls over.

He’s been taken to one doctor after another in the hope that someone will be able to do something to help. At first Baqer screamed, wriggled and squirmed out of his dad’s arms and flung himself out of the room in panic because he was sure Michael and I must be more doctors, come to poke and stare. It was a while before he decided we were friends. The doctors only prescribe medicines but the family can’t afford to buy them.

They live in [Sadr City], a huge, poor and reputedly wild Shia district hammered by Saddam as a centre of resistance. Ali (Baqer’s father) had to quit his job to take Baqer on the rounds of the hospitals. They’ve sold the TV, almost everything, to buy medicines. The house is bare but for rugs on the floor, a single light bulb and a lamp which takes over when the electricity is out, which seems to be most of the time, throughout Baghdad (including now).

If the bullet migrates medially and inferiorly it could encroach on the brain stem so Baqer has to have regular scans to check it isn’t moving. If there’s any visible deterioration they’re to take him immediately on the 10-12 hour journey to Amman for emergency treatment.

There’s no dispute that US soldiers were responsible for Baqer’s shooting, that it’s a US army bullet in his head. There’s no knowing how many more families and individuals are going through the same struggle, trying to find the money for medical care, trying to get the forces responsible to give the financial help they promised.

For that reason, rather than start an appeal for Baqer, I think we need to demand compensation and financial support from the forces responsible, for all their civilian victims. At the moment the military institution has complete impunity for what its soldiers do and the soldiers have impunity within the military.

Direct action, blockades, marches, compensation confetti in the House of Commons, letter writing to MPs or congress people, Blair, Bush and so on and the newspapers and all the rest of your powers of creative mischief and may-hem making are needed.

Indiscriminate killing

In a report published in December, Off Target: The Conduct of the War and Civilian Casualties in Iraq, Human Rights Watch conclude that two strategies, both indiscriminate as to who is affected, led to excessive civilian deaths - the use of cluster bombs and ‘decapitation’ strategies in which ‘known’ individuals were targeted.
The 13,000 cluster munitions, containing nearly two million submun-itions, killed or wounded more than 1,000 civilians during the war. In July ’03, UNICEF reported a further 1000 civilian deaths since the end of the war from unexploded ordnance. ‘In a single day, U.S. cluster-munition attacks in Hilla on March 31 killed at least 33 civilians and injured 109. A hospital director in the southern Iraqi city told HRW that cluster munitions caused 90% of the civilian injuries that his hospital treated during the war.’

Both US and UK forces used clusters extensively in populated areas. ‘...the dud rate of submunitions was not as low as the 2% claimed by the British MoD. In the Basra neighbourhood of Tannuma... researchers found evidence of multiple unexploded British submunitions, inclu-ding three in the garden of one home.

The report states that, ‘the decapitation strategy was an utter failure on military grounds, since it didn´t kill a single Iraqi leader in 50 attempts.’ It also criticizes U.S. air strikes on electrical and media facilities and the lack of action to secure large caches of weapons and ammunition abandoned by Iraqi forces.
hrw.org/press/2003/12/uk-iraq-press.htm

The Bush dilemma: democracy vs control?

On the 11th January, the most senior Shiite cleric in Iraq, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, reiterated his call for direct elections to determine the country’s political future, throwing US plans for the country into disarray. The following eight days saw 30,000 march in Basra and 100,000 in Baghdad demanding elections, while Sistani threatened ‘protests, strikes and civil disobedience’ if the US persisted with its plans ‘to design the country’s politics for its own interests’ (Sistani spokesman Abdel Mahdi al-Karbali, AFP, 16 Jan).

The US plan
The US had wanted to hand over power – at least nominally – to an interim administration chosen by ‘regional caucuses’ – one for each of Iraq’s 18 provinces (the so-called ‘November 15 agreement’).

Unlike one-person-one-vote elections this was a process over which the US would be able to exert a large degree of control since the caucuses were, in turn, to be selected by 15-member ‘organising committees’ appointed by the US-appointed Governing Council and the (largely US- and British- appointed) councils at city and provincal levels. The 30th June deadline for the ‘transfer of power’ (see box) is regarded as set in stone, since Bush needs it for his own electoral purposes.

True, this system – which the New York Times described as ‘so elaborate and complex that some American occupation officials said it was difficult for them to figure out’ (13 Jan) – suffers from the ‘absence of any role for the Iraqi people in the transfer of power to Iraqis’ (Sistani’s assessment as relayed by an interlocutor, Washington Post, 27 Nov) but from Washington’s perspective this was one of its principle advantages!

The US dilemma
The FT’s Middle East editor, Roula Khalaf correctly identified ‘the dilemma facing the US … the desire to control Iraq’s political transition while making it appear that it is driven by Iraqis.’ ‘In reality,’ she notes ‘the Bush administration cannot afford to let Iraqis exercise a free choice at this time’ (17 January). The US does not want to risk ‘los[ing] control of a country into which American taxpayers are pouring at least $18.6 billion for reconstruction and which had already cost 500-plus American lives’ (Economist,17 Jan) – and where the Bush administration wants to enact sweeping ‘free market’ reforms and plant several permanent military bases.

Unfortunately for Washington, free and open elections any time soon are likely to result in the ‘wrong’ people being elected ie. people who may not abide by Washington’s directives. Indeed according to Juan Cole, Professor of History at the University of Michigan and an expert on Iraq’s Shi’is, such elections would probably result in the followers of the young firebrand cleric Muqtada al-Sadr obtaining ‘a good third of the seats from the Shi’ite areas’ and ‘semi-fundamentalist Muslims and ex-Ba’athists or maybe Sunni Arab nationalists, who tilt towards the Ba’ath’, being elected in the Sunni areas (Democracy Now!, 14 Jan).

Sistani’s fears
Meanwhile Sistani fears, not unreasonably, ‘that the United States or established political parties may try to manipulate the votes of caucus members or even buy votes outright, undercutting both the power of the Shi’ites and the credibility of the transitional government among all Iraqis’ (LA Times, 16 Jan) and that ‘an unelected legislature could stay in power for much longer than its designated 18-month term, especially if elections slated for 2005 to chose delegates to draft a new constitution and a new parliament are not held because of worsening security’ (AP, 20 Jan).

According to Cole, when the U.S. and Britain appointed members of the provincial councils, they ‘often favoured ex-Ba’athists who had cooperated at some point with them in overthrowing Saddam and who tended to be Sunni Arabs, [and] Sistani is afraid that these councils will produce a government that’s not only not legitimate but also not representative.’ (DN!, 14 Jan)

Staying put
Despite the plans to ‘transfer power’ at the end of June, President Bush has stated quite clearly that ‘America [i]sn’t leaving [Iraq]’ (AP, 17 Nov) – comments echoed in Britain where ‘Tony Blair … has promised that Britain will stay in Iraq for at least the next two years’ (FT, 5 Jan). Even some ‘top [US] officials’ have privately acknowledged that ‘the new Iraqi government’s sovereignty [sic] will rest on a foundation of US military force and money’ (LA Times, 28 Dec). Yet Sistani has thrown a spanner in US plans to retain a large-scale military presence – and possibly four or more permanent military bases – in Iraq after the June 30 “handover”, ‘demand[ing] that any agreement for American-led forces to remain in Iraq be approved by directly elected representatives’ (NYT, 13 Jan).

The US had planned to agree a ‘status-of-forces agreement’ with the Governing Council – authorising US forces to remain and granting them legal immunity - by 31 March but, as the New York Times coyly noted, such negotiations ‘could be much tougher if they have to be carried out with Iraqis who are directly elected’, as opposed to the US’ ‘handpicked Iraqi authorities’ (13 Jan). ‘[A] classified opinion poll conducted by the State Department’s intelligence branch … found that most Iraqis now regard American troops as occupiers rather than liberators’ (The Age, 14 Nov).

Viable
Washington has been keen to portray its differences with Sistani as ‘technical’, claiming that it would be logistically difficult to organise elections by June 30 (the magic, all important date), in part because there is no electoral roll. But this claim has been challenged by British officials in Basra who claim that ‘early elections in Iraq are viable, with security and procedural obstacles surmountable before … June 30’ and that ‘an electoral roll drawn up from a mixture of ration, health and identity cards could prove acceptable’ (FT, 20 Jan).

Interestingly, last year, Iraqi census officials presented the US with a detailed plan to create a nation-wide voter-roll in time for elections in September 2004 but the US ‘rejected the idea, and Iraqi Governing Council members say they never saw the plan’ (IHT, 5 Dec).

A new hope
In the wake of Sistani’s statement, US officials said that ‘they [we]re responding to [his] objections with a new plan that w[ould] open the caucuses to more people and make their inner workings more transparent’ (NYT, 13 Jan). The head of the US civilian authority in Iraq, Paul Bremer, stated that there were ‘all kinds of ways to organise partial elections and caucuses’ and that they would be considered – but genuine elections were apparently not on the cards (Guardian, 17 Jan). ‘The new hope in Washington, [US] officials said, was in effect to make the caucus system look more democratic without changing it in a fundamental way’ (NYT, 13 Jan).

Enter the UN
In pursuit of this lofty goal Washington has been desperately trying to co-opt the UN, pressing it to ‘reach out to Shia and Sunni Muslim groups inside Iraq and urge them to back the American plan’ (washingtonpost.com, 16 Jan). On 27 Jan the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced that he was sending a team of experts to Iraq ‘to assess the feasibility of holding elections ahead of the transfer of sovereignty at the end of June’ (FT, 27 Jan) – something which Sistani had also been calling for.

Annan has said that he thinks ‘the most sustainable way forward would be one that came from the Iraqis themselves’ but past precedents do not inspire confidence in his independence. Will the US sham (s)elections go ahead? Will the UN provide the Bush administration with the cover that it so desperately needs? Watch this space: the temperature may be about to rise several degrees.

For more information on the November 15 agreement, see JNV briefing 51 ‘The Sovereignty Shell Game’.

Contact us if you would like a speaker from either Voices or JNV to come and speak to your group about the issues raised in this article.

Iraq’s debts: an odious appointment

Last 5th December, President Bush appointed former Secretary of State James Baker III as his envoy on Iraq’s debts. Baker, a senior counsellor to the global investment company the Carlyle Group, which has done business with the Saudi royal family, is also a partner at Baker Botts, a law firm which numbers Halliburton among its clients and which, according to investigative reporter Greg Palast, has ‘been working day and night to prevent the families of the victims of the 9-11 attack from seeking information from Saudi Arabia on the Kingdom’s funding of Al Qaeda fronts’ (GregPalast.com, 8 Dec).

By coincidence Saudi Arabia also happens to be Iraq’s biggest creditor, owed an estimated $25 bn in debt and $12 bn in outstanding reparations claims (JubileeIraq.org). The conflict of interests was so clear that even the New York Times opined that Baker was ‘too tangled in a matrix of lucrative private business relationships that leave him looking like a potentially interested party in any debt-restructuring formula’ (NYT, 12 Dec).

But it gets better. As Secretary of State Baker ‘once gave crucial support for continuing a billion-dollar loan program to Saddam Hussein’s government that accounts for most of the money Iraq still owes the [US]’ (AP, 11 Jan). Indeed, according to Joyce Battle, Middle East analyst for the National Security Archive in Washington ‘documents indicate [that] he intervened personally to make sure that Iraq continued to receive high levels of funding.’ All of this took place in 1989, after Halabja.
In other words, the perfect fox to run the hen house.

Whitewash
Which brings us to the crux of the matter. Baker’s Dec/Jan tour around the Middle East and Europe to talk up debt restructuring was much touted for the commitments he obtained from countries like the UAE and Saudi Arabia to ‘substantially reduce’ Iraq’s debt. But since ‘most, perhaps all’ of these debts are ‘odious’ (Oxfam) – 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 - Iraq shouldn’t be paying them in the first place!

Indeed, by arranging so-called ‘Paris Club debt restructuring’ Baker is actually ‘forc[ing Iraqis] to pay large amounts of odious debt, whitewashed by the language of “debt forgiveness”, instead of only paying the small amount of commercial debt which a fair arbitration tribunal would judge legitimate’ (Jubilee Iraq press release, 17 Dec). Moreover Iraq will likely be ‘rob[bed] … of its economic freedom, by requir[ements] that it adhere to an IMF structural adjustment program.’

But of course, given his history Baker was never likely to support such a tribunal …

Paying the price
The British Government’s new official position is that the ‘vast majority’ of Iraq’s debts must be ‘writ[ten] off … to ensure economic sustainability’ (Gordon Brown, PA News, 29 Jan) but thus far neither the US nor Britain has written off a penny of their outstanding claims.

The President of the World Bank, James Wolfensohn, has estimated that most of Iraq’s creditors will only write-off two-thirds of outstanding debts (Reuters, 22 Jan) and Jubilee Iraq reports that, according to the debt brokerage firm Exotix, creditors ‘are likely to get back around two-fifths of what they are owed - or a total of $20 billion to $25 billion – but [that] it will take about 20 years with payments starting roughly two years from now’ and ‘Iraq would likely be paying off only the interest for the first four or five years, with payments amounting to around $2.25 billion annually’ later increasing to $5 bn (jubileeiraq.org, 12 Dec).

It seems that Iraqis – desperately in need of funds to rebuild their shattered country - will continue to pay the price for their repression at the hands of Saddam Hussein.
For more information on Iraq’s debt visit the Jubilee Iraq web-site: www.jubileeiraq.org

‘A catalogue of killings’

In Samarra
Last 30 November, the US claimed a major victory in the Sunni town of Samarra, killing 54 guerillas in a major gun battle. The truth appears to have been very different.
Whilst the US was unable to produce the body of a single dead insurgent, a total of 54 people were treated at the hospital, of whom eight were later confirmed to have died, mostly civilians. Among those killed were Amira Mahdi Saleh, an employee in her mid-thirties, queuing for a shift change at the Samarra Drugs Factory, Hossam Shakir al-Douri (25), Raid Ali Fadhel, Abdullah Amin al-Kurdi who was ‘mown down outside a small mosque in front of the local hospital’ and a 71-year old Iranian pilgrim Fatah Allah Hijazi (Independent, 6 Dec).

In an e-mail to retired Colonel David Hackworth, a soldier with the US 4th Infantry Division, who was a ‘combat leader’ during the fighting and who had known Hackworth for eight years, claimed that ‘most of the casualties were civilians, not insurgents or criminals as being reported … During the ambushes the tanks, brads and armoured Humvees hosed down houses, buildings and cars … the Rules of Engagement [are] such that the US soldiers are to consider buildings, homes, cars to be hostile if enemy fire is received from them (regardless of who else is inside) … We really don’t know if we kill anyone because we don’t stick around to find out … the logic is to respond to attacks using our superior firepower… this is done in many cases knowing that there are people inside these buildings or cars who may not be connected to the insurgents… We drive around in convoys, blast the hell out of an area, break down doors and search buildings; but the guerrillas continue to attack us… Much of Samarra is fairly well shot up… We are probably turning many Iraqis against us and I am afraid, instead of climbing out of the hole, we are digging ourselves deeper’ (Independent, 5 Dec).

For more on these killings see JNV briefing #52 ‘After Samarra’, available on-line at www.j-n-v.org or from the Voices office.

More killings
In our last newsletter we noted a tendency of the media to produce lists of US/UK soldiers killed in Iraq – but never lists of Iraqi civilians killed by these same forces. Since this tendency has persisted, we once again list some of the deaths that you’re not supposed to remember:

14-16 September, Basra Baha Mousa is detained and subsequently beaten to death by British soldiers after a raid on the hotel where he worked as a receptionist (Independent on Sunday, 4 Jan). A second detainee, Kifah Taha, suffers acute renal failure after being kicked in the kidneys. According to a letter written by Major James Ralph, anaesthesia and intensive care consultant at the British Military Hospital’s 33 Field Hospital at Shaibah, Mr Taha ‘was admitted to our facility at 22.40 hours on the 16th September. It appears he was assaulted approximately 72 hours ago and sustained severe bruising to his upper abdomen, right side of chest, left forearms and left upper inner thigh.’

The Army’s Special Investigation Branch opened an investigation following Mousa’s death but ‘two soldiers who were arrested have since been released and no charges have been made’ (IoS, 4 Jan). On 11 Jan the Independent on Sunday reported that the MoD was investigating the deaths of a further nine civilians caused by British soldiers since May 1, at least four of which occurred in custody.

2 November, al-Qadasiya An Iraqi driving home after Ramadan prayers is killed when US soldiers ambush the pick-up truck he is driving, wounding four of his passengers. The men had left the mosque at 8pm thinking they were safe ‘because the Americans announced over a loudspeaker that curfew was lifted.’ A pick-up truck attempting to take the wounded to hospital is also attacked by US soldiers, killing a further five Iraqis (Independent, 5 Nov).

11 November, Fallujah Five Iraqis are killed when their truck comes under fire from an American tank. Among the dead are 10-year-old Khalid al-Jumaidy, his father and two young cousins, ages 18 and 21. The family were returning to Fallujah after going to buy live chickens for their store (San Francisco Chronicle, 24 November).

5 December, Samarra Elderly shopkeeper Abdel Rasul al-Abassi is shot on his rooftop. His relatives told the Independent’s Phil Reeves that he was shot by a US sniper while trying to repair his water tank (Independent, 6 Dec).

10 January, Amarah At least five Iraqis are killed, including at least one shot by a British soldier, after Iraqi police open fire on demonstrators demanding jobs. British Major Tim Smith later claimed that British troops were acting in ‘self-defence’ since ‘a number of objects were thrown at the British troops, possibly grenades’ (Independent, 12 January).

13 January, Fallujah Three Iraqi civilians are killed by American gunfire after militants fire rocket-propelled grenades at the city-hall where some of the US troops have offices. ‘The Americans responded by shooting indiscriminately,’ Iraqi police Sgt. Nazar Yassin - who witnessed the incident - told the Los Angeles Times (14 January).

For more examples of US/UK killings of civilians in Iraq see Voices new briefing ‘A Catalogue of Killings’.

The return of the secret police

When he addressed the US Congress last July, Tony Blair waxed lyrical about ‘our ultimate weapon… the universal values of the human spirit… [A]ny time ordinary people are given the chance to choose, the choice is the same… the rule of law not the rule of the secret police.’ It may therefore surprise him to learn that the US Govern-ment has budgeted up to $3bn over the next three years to fund a new secret police force for Iraq which ‘[t]he Pentagon and CIA have told the White House… will allow America to maintain control over the direction of the country as sovereignty [sic] is handed over to the Iraqi people during the course of this year’ (Sunday Telegraph, 4 Jan).

‘Its ranks are to be drawn from Iraqi exile groups, Kurdish and Shi’ite forces - in addition to former Mukhabarat [intelligence] agents who are now working for the Americans.’ Last August, the Washington Post reported that the US-led occupation authorities had ‘begun a covert campaign to recruit and train agents [from Saddam’s] once-dreaded intelligence services… an instrument loathed by most Iraqis and renowned across the Arab world for its casual use of torture, fear, intimidation, rape and imprisonment.’

‘Reign but not rule’
The CIA – which currently has 275 officers in Iraq - is expected to play a ‘leading role’ in directing the new forces’ operations and is hoping that ‘the very existence of a strongly pro-American security force will terrify civilians who are currently supporting the insurgency’ into desisting (Sunday Telegraph, 4 Jan).

According to John Pike, an expert on classified military budgets at the Washington-based Global Security organisation, ‘The creation of a well-functioning local secret police, that in effect is a branch of the CIA, is part of the general handover strategy…The presence of a powerful secret police, loyal to the Americans, will mean that the new Iraqi political regime will not stray outside the parameters that the US wants to set. To begin with, the new Iraqi government will reign but not rule.’ (Sunday Telegraph, 4 Jan)

British connection?
Meanwhile, ‘a secret police force operating with British approval in southern Iraq has been accused of kidnapping suspects who have been cruelly mistreated in detention and, in some cases, have disappeared’ (Sunday Times, 25 Jan). ‘Several families have claimed that men targeted by the Istakhbarat el-Shurt (intelligence police) were abducted at gunpoint and that appeals to British authorities to establish their fate have gone unheeded.’

A senior commander of the force in question told the Sunday Times ‘that it had hired members of the Iranian-backed Badr brigade [the militia of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI)] which has been accused of running death squads blamed for the murders of dozens of supporters of Saddam Hussein’s ousted regime.’ According to the Sunday Times, ‘the force operates under the control of Wael Abdel Latif, the governor of Basra province, who is himself supervised by the British.’

Voices has a new campaign postcard about the secret police force as well as a new briefing ‘Unusual Compromises: How and Why the CIA is Rehiring Saddam’s Spies’. Available from the office.

Private profit

Since our last newsletter:
- US giant Bechtel has been awarded a further reconstruction contract worth $1.8 bn, despite evidence of slow progress and shoddy work.
- The total value of contracts awarded to Halliburton topped $9 bn. The company has been accused of overcharging $61mn for fuel it brought into Iraq from Kuwait and $16mn for providing meals to troops at a single Kuwaiti base and has had to fire two employees for taking kickbacks (Guardian, 3 Feb).
- US company Harris Corp. was awarded $96mn to run Saddam Hussein’s old television and radio network (WP, 12 Jan). Its predecessor, defence contractor SAIC, had ‘charged the Pentagon $100mn… but paid its broadcasters $30 a week’ (Economist, 13 Dec).
- On 7 Nov the Guardian reported that ITN was ‘preparing to bid for a lucrative news channel in Iraq.’
- Ahud Farouki, a longtime business associate and family friend of Pentagon favourite - and Governing Council member - Ahmed Chalabi ‘got a substantial piece of an $80-million contract to provide security for [Iraq’s oil] fields’ (LA Times, 7 Nov).
- The Pentagon launched an inquiry into the awarding of licences to establish mobile phone networks in Iraq (which were announced last October), amidst allegations that two CPA officials and an Iraqi minister had taken bribes. British businessman Nadhmi Auchi – who ‘face[s] persistent allegations … of financial ties to the former regime’ and was recently fined £1.4mn in a French court for illegal business dealings – is alleged to have backed one of the winning consortia to the tune of $20mn (FT, 26 Nov).

… and public risk
Meanwhile the illegality of the sweeping ‘free market’ reforms authorised by US viceroy Paul Bremer last September - which permitted mass privatisation, slashed the ceiling on corporation tax and eliminated almost all tariffs (see Iraq for Sale briefing) - has been causing problems for businesses keen to get a slice of the action in Iraq.

According to Juliet Blanch, a partner at the London-based international law firm Norton Rose, ‘most [experts] believe that [the US] actions are not legal. There would be no requirement for a new government to ratify their [actions]’ (FT, 29 Oct). Indeed, even the UK Attorney General - in a private 26 March 2003 memo, subsequently leaked to the press - has written that “the imposition of major structural economic reforms would not be authorised by international law” (Guardian, 7 Nov).

Of course, the US Government is not known for its delicacy in matters of international law – when questioned about the legality of barring France, Germany and others from reconstruction contracts Bush joked, ‘international law? I’d better call my lawyer’ (Independent, 12 Dec) - so what’s the problem? In a word: insurance.

‘Privatized firms could be renationalized, foreign ownership rules could be reinstated and contracts signed with the CPA could be torn up,’ Naomi Klein explains (Nation, 5 Jan) and it would be perfectly legal. ‘Normally, multinationals protect themselves...by purchasing “political risk” insurance…Yet in Iraq, Bremer has overseen the creation of a business climate so volatile that private insurers…are simply unwilling to take the risk.’

Nonetheless the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) – a US government agency - has apparently been given the go ahead to insure US – and only US - businesses operating in Iraq. All of which, Klein observes, means that, ‘if a new Iraqi government expropriates and re-regulates across the board … the same people who have already paid Halliburton, Bechtel et al. to make a killing on Iraq’s reconstruction would have to pay these companies again, this time in compensation for losses. While the enormous profits being made in Iraq are strictly private, it turns out that the entire risk is being shouldered by the public’ (Nation, 5 Jan).

Read more in the Voices briefing ‘Iraq for Sale’ briefing.

Kathy Kelly: 3 months in prison

On 27 January, Kathy Kelly, co-founder of Voices in the Wilderness and three-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee, was sentenced to three months in federal prison for bearing witness against US military violence, by crossing onto the property of Ft. Benning military base in November 2003, protesting against the School of the Americas/Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (SOA/WHISC).

Alongside Kathy, Fr. Jerry Zawada, an Iraq Peace Team member and recent VitW delegate to Iraq, was sentenced to six months, and Faith Fippinger, a former Human Shield in Iraq and Scott Diehl, a CPT member who was in Iraq during the invasion, were both sentenced to three months in prison.

The following is from a statement Kathy made before the judge who sentenced her.

It's important to continue bringing before this court testimony from or about those who can't appear, people whom we've met when visiting places directly affected by US expenditures on military training and military solutions. Quite often these solutions are based on threat and force, rather than considerations of mercy and compassion.

A report in the London Observer yesterday quotes US Armed forces medical personnel warning that 20 percent of the veterans returning from Iraq will suffer post traumatic stress disorders - already 22 soldiers have committed suicide.

Families of these soldiers, whose arms will ache emptily for loved ones that will never return, can, I believe, find under-standing in the families of others, far away from the US, who similarly feel bereaved.

In 1985...I traveled to San Juan de Limay, in the north of Nicaragua. Children there were radiant and friendly, many of them too young to understand that during the previous week US funded contras had kidnapped and murdered 25 people in their village. Later that summer, I fasted with Nicaragua's Foreign Minister, himself a Maryknoll priest, and listened to stories pour forth as many hundreds of Nicaraguan peasant pilgrims vigiled and fasted in the Mon senor Lezcano church to show solidarity with the priest-minister's desire to nonviolently resist contra terrorism. Rev. Miguel D'Escoto urged us to find nonviolent actions commensurate to the crimes being committed. This experience gave me reason to believe that the US could have used negotiation and diplomacy to resolve disputes with Nicaragua.

The Christian Peacemaker Teams maintained a steady presence in Jeremie, in the southern finger of Haiti, throughout the time when the US had determined it was too dangerous for US soldiers to be there. In 1995, I was there for the three months just before the US troops returned. Throughout this stretch of history, the US spent more money on troop movements, equipping troops, training troops, than it spent on meeting human needs. The Commandant of the region, Colonel Rigobert Jean, commented publicly that he was "ashamed and embarrassed that it was left to the 'blans' (Creole for foreigners) on the hill to preserve peace and security in the region." He was referring to our five person team. Again, I had reason to believe that unarmed peacemakers could be relied on to create greater security in areas of conflict.

...More recently, in Iraq, during the US bombing in March and April of 2003, I saw how children suffer when nations decide to put their resources into weapons and warfare rather than meeting human needs. All of us learned to adopt a poker face, hoping not to frighten the children, whenever there were ear-splitting blasts and gut wrenching thuds.

During every day and night of the bombing, I would hold little Miladhah and Zainab in my arms. That's how I learned of their fear: they were grinding their teeth, morning, noon and night. But they were far more fortunate than the children who were survivors of direct hits, children whose brothers and sisters and parents were maimed and killed.
Judge Faircloth, we have experienced and seen the deadly effect of US military policy on mothers and children, on families. We have held the children and tried to comfort them under bombs.

It is because of these experiences that we feel so strongly. And this is why I'm willing to go into the US prison system and experience again, as we have before, the suffering of all of these women who are being separated from their families in the American prisons. It's important to hear the voices of women trying to comfort their own children over the telephone, children they won't see be able to hug and cuddle. I remember my friend Gloria, in the prison telephone room: "Momma's gonna tickle your feet, oh baby, momma's gonna tickle your feet, you momma's baby." Gloria and many thousands of other mothers locked up in a world of imprisoned beauty would never tickle their baby's feet, because they'd been sentenced to mandatory five year minimums.

Sometimes I think we face a wilderness of compassion in this country. But when I think of the many voices that have tried, in this court, to clamour for the works of mercy rather than the works of war, I feel at home, I feel grateful, and I feel a deep urge to be silent and listen to the cries of those most afflicted, their cries are often hard to hear-but when we hear them, we're called, all of us, to be like voices in the wilderness, raising their laments and finding ourselves motivated to build a better world.
For more information, visit www.vitw.org.

women’s rights could be swept away
In January, women in Iraq were alarmed to hear that the Governing Council had passed an order decreeing abolition of Iraq's uniform civil codes in favor of religious law. Women activists representing 80 women's organizations demonstrated against Decree 137, with placards such as "No to discrimination, No to differentiating women and men in our New Iraq."

The order was passed by only 11 of the 25 members of the IGC and a review has since been promised by the incoming IGC President. It would need to be ratified by Paul Bremer. However, in trying to pass the order, the IGC acquiesed to the jurisdiction of religion over issues most affecting women such as marriage, suitability to marry, the marriage contract, proof of marriage, dowry, financial support, divorce, the 3-month "severance payments" owed to divorced wives in lieu of alimony and inheritance. Different communities would be governed by different laws.

Iraq’s Personal Status Law has been on the statute books since 1959 and represents a significant part of a hard-won battle for equality. The attempt to pass the order represents a more general concern that Iraqi women have for the future of gender equality and suggests that they may be sacrificed to the developing politics on a national scale.

While the British Government has made token noises in the direction of gender equality, they must be urged to do all they can to ensure that women’s rights are given equal priority and developed.



Resources

new books

Tell me lies: Propaganda and media distortion in the attack on Iraq
by David Miller (ed), Pluto Press, £12.99.
Excellent collection of short essays, including contributions from John Pilger, Mark Curtis, Noam Chomsky and Robert Fisk.

Iraq: the human cost of history
by Tareq Ismael and William Haddad (eds), Pluto, £25.
Flawed collection of essays concerning the sanctions period (1990 – 2003). Highly variable in quality but with standout 60-page contribution from former voices co-ordinator Milan Rai. Other useful contributions from Eric Herring and Stephen Zunes. One for your local library?

Inventing Iraq: the failure of nation building and a history denied
by Toby Dodge, Hurst and Company, £25.
Somewhat heavy-going – and fairly mainstream – academic monograph on Britain’s post-WWI occupation of Iraq, which draws explicit lessons for the current US/UK occupation. Ominously Dodge concludes that the US will probably ‘choose simply to change the personnel at the head of government and allow them to govern in a way very similar to that of the old regime.’ Worth reading but expensive.

campaign postcards

Three new postcards are now available: ‘Democracy Means Elections’, ‘Tony, didn’t your mother tell you to clean up after yourself’, ‘Iraq’s new secret police?’ Copies of two previous Voices postcards: ‘Stop the Corporate Invasion of Iraq’ and ‘Compensation’ are still available.

Postcards can be obtained by contacting the office and are free, though donations are welcome. Ideal for stalls, mailings etc…

essential websites

Informed Comment
www.juancole.com - Highly informative web-blog run by Iraq-expert and Professor of History at the University of Michigan, Juan Cole.

Future of Iraq Portal
www.justinalexander.net/iraq
Fantastic set of links to Iraq-related sites.

Occupation Watch
www.occupationwatch.org - An essential web-site. Includes reports by members of the OW team itself as well as an excellent selection of media articles.

Women-focused
Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom have an excellent web portal for news and initiatives relating to women in Iraq
www.peacewomen.org/news/Iraq/news.html

UNIFEM have developed a very useful Iraq resource as part of their portal on Women, Peace and Security, with lots of background and legislative information as well as analysis - www.womenwarpeace. org/iraq/iraq.htm

cds & videos

Peace Not War double CD, £15. Peace movement fund-raiser with tracks by Chumawamba, Public Enemy, Massive Attack and the Asian Dub Foundation. Available from voices. Proceeds to voices.

Regime Unchanged by Milan Rai
‘A magnificent expose of the lies that propelled the criminal attack on Iraq’ - John Pilger
Book available from the voices office (see back page) at £11.50 incl p&p

Badges

JNV have produced an excellent new badge in response to the Hutton enquiry. Copies
available from the office (50p each or 10 for £2.50).