Iraqi police detain two British soldiers in Basra
www.chinaview.cn 2005-09-19 22:46:55
BAGHDAD, Sept. 19 (Xinhuanet) -- Iraqi police detained two British soldiers in civilian clothes in the southern city Basra for firing on a police station on Monday, police said.
"Two persons wearing Arab uniforms opened fire at a police station in Basra. A police patrol followed the attackers and captured them to discover they were two British soldiers," an Interior Ministry source told Xinhua.
The two soldiers were using a civilian car packed with explosives, the source said.
He added that the two were being interrogated in the police headquarters of Basra.
The British forces informed the Iraqi authorities that the two soldiers were performing an official duty, the source said. British military authorities said they could not confirm the incident but investigations were underway.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-09/19/content_3514065.htmhttp://www.news24.com/News24/World/Iraq/0,,2-10-1460_1814710,00.htmlDoes al-Zarqawi exist?
11/10/2005 14:46 - (SA)
Baghdad - Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's faction has claimed responsibility for attacks that have left hundreds of Iraqis dead, and the United States has called him the most dangerous terrorist in Iraq.
Still, even as al-Zarqawi threatens more chaos - in recordings and internet messages - many Iraqis believe the Jordanian militant does not even exist and is merely a phantom created by the Americans to sow unrest in the country.
Similar disbelief greeted Britain's explanation that its soldiers, arrested in southern Iraq disguised as Arabs, were on an undercover hunt for terrorists. Instead, some Iraqis argue the soldiers were out to kill Shi'ite Muslims and blame the murders on Sunnis in hopes of sparking civil war.
Such conspiracy theories are common among Arabs and may seem laughable to outsiders. But in Iraq, where rulers from British colonists to Saddam Hussein regularly played one ethnic group against the other, imagined plots can seem reasonable - a fact that may have dire consequences for US efforts to build a stable Iraqi government.
Opposition to constitution
"Zarqawi is ... a myth that America has created to put a face to the terrorism it wants to stoke in this country to justify its continued presence," Sheik Amer al-Husseini, a top aide to radical Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, told The Associated Press in a recent interview.
"If there was no more terrorism in Iraq, there would be no reason for the United States to remain ... making it harder for them to ... force this constitution on Iraqis," said al-Husseini.
http://www.news24.com/News24/World/Iraq/0,,2-10-1460_1814710,00.html
'Trophy' video exposes private security contractors shooting up Iraqi drivers
By Sean Rayment, Defence Correspondent
Last Updated: 11:55pm GMT 26/11/2005
A "trophy" video appearing to show security guards in Baghdad randomly shooting Iraqi civilians has sparked two investigations after it was posted on the internet, the Sunday Telegraph can reveal.
The video has sparked concern that private security companies, which are not subject to any form of regulation either in Britain or in Iraq, could be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of innocent Iraqis.
Last night a spokesman for defence firm Aegis Defence Services - set up in 2002 by Lt Col Tim Spicer, a former Scots Guards officer - confirmed that the company was carrying out an internal investigation to see if any of their employees were involved.
The Foreign Office has also confirmed that it is investigating the contents of the video in conjunction with Aegis, one of the biggest security companies operating in Iraq. The company was recently awarded a £220 million security contract in Iraq by the United States government. Aegis conducts a number of security duties and helped with the collection of ballot papers in the country's recent referendum
Lt Col Spicer, 53, rose to public prominence in 1998 when his private military company Sandlines International was accused of breaking United Nations sanctions by selling arms to Sierra Leone.
The video first appeared on the website www.aegisIraq.co.uk. The website states: "This site does not belong to Aegis Defence Ltd, it belongs to the men on the ground who are the heart and soul of the company." The clips have been removed.
The website also contains a message from Lt Col Spicer, which reads: "I am concerned about media interest in this site and I remind everyone of their contractual obligation not to speak to or assist the media without clearing it with the project management or Aegis London.
"Refrain from posting anything which is detrimental to the company since this could result in the loss or curtailment of our contract with resultant loss for everybody."
Last night a spokesman for the Foreign Office said: "Aegis have assured us that there is nothing on the video to suggest that it has anything to do with their company. This is now a matter for the American authorities because Aegis is under contract to the UnitedStates.
"http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/11/27/wirq27.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/11/27/ixworld.html
Wednesday, August 3rd, 2005
Bush's Exit Plan: Fomenting Civil War in Iraq?
Our guest today writes that civil war has already begun in Iraq. He has the center spread in the current issue of the paper called, "Bush’s Exit Plan: Civil War." He says, "With the war stalemated, repeated deployments wearing down morale of U.S. troops and too few new recruits to maintain force levels, the Bush administration may be deliberately provoking civil war as its “exit strategy.” The goal is not so much to exit Iraq, but leave behind a skeletal military force that would maintain the network of permanent bases under construction throughout Iraq while maintaining access to massive oil deposits in the North and South. Breaking Iraq into a series of mini-states, a strategy being pushed by some White House allies in the media, is seen as one way to ensure these goals."
* Arun Gupta, Editor with the New York Independent newspaper of the New York Independent Media Center.
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/03/1419259Last Updated: Wednesday, 12 April 2006, 09:48 GMT 10:48 UK
Iraqi death squads 'not police'
Iraq's interior minister has admitted death squads and other unauthorised armed groups have been carrying out sectarian killings in the country.
But in a BBC interview, Bayan Jabr denied allegations that these groups were linked to his ministry.
Mr Jabr blamed the proliferation of civilian security companies and licensed protection agencies used by other government ministries.
'Out of order'
In his interview with the BBC, Mr Jabr said despite appearances, those involved in recent attacks were not genuine police officers.
"Terrorists or someone who support the terrorists... are using the clothes of the police or the military," he said.
He said problems also stemmed from the existence of non-governmental security agencies like the Facility Protection Service, an armed force set up during the US-led administration of Iraq in 2003 to guard official buildings.
Mr Jabr called the 150,000-strong FPS "out of order, not under our control". He also implicated the involvement of about 30,000 civilian security guards operating in Iraq.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4901786.stm‘The Salvador Option’
The Pentagon may put Special-Forces-led assassination or kidnapping teams in Iraq
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Michael Hirsh and John Barry
Newsweek
Updated: 8:59 p.m. ET Jan. 14, 2005
Jan. 8 - What to do about the deepening quagmire of Iraq? The Pentagon’s latest approach is being called "the Salvador option"—and the fact that it is being discussed at all is a measure of just how worried Donald Rumsfeld really is. "What everyone agrees is that we can’t just go on as we are," one senior military officer told NEWSWEEK. "We have to find a way to take the offensive against the insurgents. Right now, we are playing defense. And we are losing." Last November’s operation in Fallujah, most analysts agree, succeeded less in breaking "the back" of the insurgency—as Marine Gen. John Sattler optimistically declared at the time—than in spreading it out.
Now, NEWSWEEK has learned, the Pentagon is intensively debating an option that dates back to a still-secret strategy in the Reagan administration’s battle against the leftist guerrilla insurgency in El Salvador in the early 1980s. Then, faced with a losing war against Salvadoran rebels, the U.S. government funded or supported "nationalist" forces that allegedly included so-called death squads directed to hunt down and kill rebel leaders and sympathizers. Eventually the insurgency was quelled, and many U.S. conservatives consider the policy to have been a success—despite the deaths of innocent civilians and the subsequent Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6802629/site/newsweekIraq car bombers 'from Algeria'
15/06/2005 08:00 - (SA)
Dakar - Up to 20% of suicide car bombers in Iraq are from Algeria, a result, a senior US military official said, of growing co-operation between Islamic extremists in North Africa and like-minded Iraqis.
Forensic investigations have provided the 20% figure for Algerian suicide car bombers in Iraq, and shown roughly 5% from Morocco and Tunisia, the US officer with responsibilities in Europe and Africa said on Tuesday on condition of anonymity to defer for reasons of protocol to US commanders in Iraq.
The majority of foreign bombers in Iraq are believed to come from countries in the Arabian gulf, mainly Saudi Arabia and Yemen, US officials say.
In an interview on Tuesday, the US officer said ties between underground terror cells across the region were increasing, resulting in more co-operation, money for the Iraq war and a stepped-up flow of Islamic extremists from North Africa.
The officer said the numbers had increased, but gave no specific figures.
He said increasing efforts on the part of Algerian, Moroccan and Libyans security services to combat local terror cells were resulting in extremists joining international operations, but that they would later return home.
The United States has reacted by funnelling more money and troops into north and northwest Africa to train and equip armies to combat the growing threat from local terror and insurgent groups like Algeria's Salafist Group for Call and Combat, which is believed to have links with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network and is considered a terrorist organisation by the United States.
http://www.news24.com/News24/Africa/News/0,,2-11-1447_1721588,00.htmlWith Babak Dehghanpisheh in Baghdad and Mark Hosenball in Washington
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6885875/site/newsweek/Iraq: Unmasking the Insurgents
Shadow war: The elections won't stop the bombers, but quality intel--and luck--might help.
By Rod Nordland, Tom Masland and Christopher Dickey
Newsweek
....Through the beginning of August, NEWSWEEK was able to count 108 suicide bomb attacks cited in news reports and military press releases--about 1.5 a week over the span of the occupation. But according to military intelligence officials in Baghdad, there were 49 car bombs in September alone, 103 in October, 133 in November (when the United States launched its assault on Fallujah) and 84 in December. Not all these were suicide attacks: the military estimates that 50 percent were. The Allawi government has tried to reach out to some key figures in the insurgency, including Mudher al-Kharbit, brother of the sheik bombed by the Americans in 2003. One informed source says Allawi has even tried to initiate contact with Younes al-Ahmed, a key Baathist commander. "The crucial point in the whole of our antiterrorism strategy is how to split these groups," says national-security adviser al-Rubaie. But to begin to do that, the threat of the suicide bombers has to be contained--because most of them have no roots in Iraq, and no stake in its future.
Among those who have been identified are Yemenis, Syrians, Palestinians and even some European citizens. But Iraqi and U.S. officials, as well as sources inside the resistance, say there are especially large numbers of young Saudis who have taken the same path that al-Shayea did to the streets of Baghdad. According to DeFreitas, most of those suicide bombers whose identities have been ascertainable in the last six months were from Saudi Arabia. The typical profile is much like Ahmed al-Shayea's, twentysomethings and even teenagers from comfortable middle-class families. "They have got no experience, they are not trained," a Palestinian jihadi told NEWSWEEK. "They just have to drive the vehicle. But these boys--17, 18 years old--are important."
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
