Freies Politikforum für Demokraten und Anarchisten

palestina libera · Beiträge: 1665

The United Nations says 888 people were killed in violence in Iraq in November, up from 714 the previous month.

The U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq says in a statement Tuesday that 489 of those killed in November were civilians, including police. The other 399 were members of Iraqi security forces, including the Kurdish peshmerga, Interior Ministry SWAT forces and militias fighting alongside the Iraqi army.
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/888-killed-iraq-violence-november-35506618

Former head of US special forces admits: Islamic State would not exist if Bush didn’t invade Iraq

he former commander of U.S. special forces in Afghanistan and Iraq admitted that strategic blunders by the Bush administration had led to the rise of Islamic State militants.

Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn told the German newspaper Der Spiegel that Americans allowed their anger of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to lead them into disastrous military policies that failed to address the root causes of terrorism — and actually helped create new and more brutal terrorists.

The misunderstanding was so great that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who now heads ISIS, was freed in 2004 from a military prison after a U.S. military commission cleared him as harmless.

“We were too dumb,” Flynn said. “We didn’t understand who we had there at that moment. When 9/11 occurred, all the emotions took over, and our response was, ‘Where did those bastards come from? Let’s go kill them. Let’s go get them.’ Instead of asking why they attacked us, we asked where they came from. Then we strategically marched in the wrong direction.”
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/11/former-head-of-us-special-forces-admits-islamic-state-would-not-exist-if-bush-didnt-invade-iraq/

palestina libera · Beiträge: 1665

Two unpublished investigations show that the United States has consistently overlooked killings and torture by Iraqi government-sponsored Shi'ite militias.

http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/mideast-crisis-iraq-militias/?rpc=401/

palestina libera · Beiträge: 1665

On the front lines of the battle against the Islamic State, suspicion of the United States runs deep. Iraqi fighters say they have all seen the videos purportedly showing U.S. helicopters airdropping weapons to the militants, and many claim they have friends and relatives who have witnessed similar instances of collusion.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/iraqis-think-the-us-is-in-cahoots-with-isis-and-it-is-hurting-the-war/2015/12/01/d00968ec-9243-11e5-befa-99ceebcbb272_story.html

From military forces to spying, former Baathists are a powerful factor in the rise and control of Islamic State. A look inside the group's surveillance operation shows how
http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/mideast-crisis-iraq-islamicstate/

palestina libera · Beiträge: 1665

In figures it calls "staggering", the United Nations says that almost 19,000 civilians have been killed and more than 36,000 wounded in violence in Iraq since the start of 2014.

In a new joint report published on Tuesday, the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights listed a large number of atrocities committed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/01/iraq-violence-reports-staggering-civilian-toll-160119124911533.html

palestina libera · Beiträge: 1665

The tomb is in the town of Uzair, which is the Arabic version of the name Ezra, and the shrine has taken on many Islamic aspects. The shrine contains Hebrew scriptures and Jewish symbols, and Quranic verses and Islamic inscriptions. It was turned into an Islamic landmark following the mass exodus of the Jews of Iraq to Israel in the 1950s.
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/02/iraq-tomb-jewish-prohet-ezra-turned-islamic.html#

palestina libera · Beiträge: 1665

At the moment, there are a maximum of 3,870 U.S. military personnel (or 7,740 actual boots on the ground) in Iraq supporting the war against the Islamic State. That’s the “official cap” imposed by the Obama administration, because everyone knows that the president and his top officials are eager to end American wars in the Middle East, not expand them. Of course, that number doesn’t include the other 1,130 American military types (or 2,260 boots) -- give or take we don’t know how many -- who just happen to be there on what’s called... er, um... “temporary deployments,” or are the result of overlap from rotating deployments, but add up to perhaps 5,000 trainers and advisers, or maybe, for all we know, more, including 200 Special Operations forces whose numbers are officially acknowledged by no one but mentioned in press reports. And naturally that 5,000 figure doesn’t include the American private contractors also flowing into Iraq in growing numbers to support the U.S. military because everyone knows that they aren’t either troops or boots on the ground and so don’t get counted. Those are the rules.
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176128/tomgram%3A_william_astore%2C_words_about_war_matter/#more

palestina libera · Beiträge: 1665

Thirteen years ago, US occupation forces entered Baghdad, proud of their victory over a country that has been under an unjust and deadly blockade for more than a decade, and boasting about a sneaky victory over a country that was forced to destroy its weapons in compliance with resolutions that appeared to come from the UN but in reality were US-based, and the country did so in order to obtain milk for its children and medicine for the sick.

America came into Iraq and occupied it, ignoring international law, alleging that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction and supports Al-Qaeda which later turned out to be false allegations that aimed at giving a cover to the occupation and its goals of destroying Iraq on the humanitarian and structural levels, bringing it to pieces and robbing it of its wealth.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20160420-on-the-anniversary-of-the-fall-of-baghdad-so-we-wont-forget/

Post-war Iraq: 'Everybody is corrupt, from top to bottom. Including me'

A corrupt political class has led a 13-year pillage on public money in the pursuit of power. As oil prices fall, further jeopardising the country’s revenues, there is little hope that governance will improve
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/19/post-war-iraq-corruption-oil-prices-revenues?CMP=share_btn_tw

Endless corruption is leaving Iraq a failed state

Property prices in central Baghdad are as high as London’s, even though Iraq’s national income is down by 70 percent since the collapse of oil prices. Islamic State bombings regularly devastate parts of the capital and still the real estate market booms. Why?

Because there is so much “dirty money” in Iraq that needs to be laundered. If you lack the political clout to get your stolen money out of the country, then the safest course is to put it into residential property. But then that’s not a very safe bet either when the entire pseudo-democratic system bequeathed to Iraq by the U.S. invasion is on the brink of collapse.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2016/05/10/commentary/world-commentary/endless-corruption-leaving-iraq-failed-state/#.VzYHkKAoq5n

palestina libera · Beiträge: 1665

The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) estimated that a total of 867 Iraqis were killed in violence in the month of May, 468 of them civilians.

The Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary General for Iraq, Jan Kubis, said the population’s resilience against terrorism was praiseworthy and called on the Iraqi government to do more to help protect civilians from the increased threat of terrorist attacks.
http://rudaw.net/english/middleeast/iraq/020620161

palestina libera · Beiträge: 1665

The Iraqi government has been urged to investigate allegations that civilians detained during the battle for Falluja have been tortured by Shia militiamen.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-36458954

palestina libera · Beiträge: 1665

A total of 738 men and boys remain missing after they were detained by militias backing the Iraqi government offensive to retake Fallujah from ISIS, a U.N. envoy said Friday.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2016/Jul-15/362257-more-than-700-iraqi-men-and-boys-missing-from-fallujah-un.ashx

Why some Iraqi Shiites are pushing for distance from Iran
Iraq’s Shiites are witnessing a political-religious rift in their stance toward Iran whose development can be traced back to 2003. While some express complete loyalty to the Shiite political regime in Tehran, others object to its regional policies, including toward Iraq, and distance from it.

http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/07/iraq-shiite-iran-najaf-qods.html