"What happened to me represents an insult to the whole National Assembly that was elected by the Iraqi people. This shows that the democracy we are enjoying is fake," al-Sheik said. "Through such incidents, the U.S. Army tries to show that it is the real controlling power in the country, not the new Iraqi government."
Updated 12:45 PM ET April 20, 2005
The bodies of more than 50 people have been recovered from the Tigris River and have been identified, President Jalal Talabani said Wednesday. The bodies were believed to have been those of hostages seized in the Madain region earlier this month.
In a separate discovery, another 19 Iraqis were shot to death and left lined up against a bloodstained wall in a soccer stadium in the town of Haditha, about 140 miles northwest of Baghdad, an Iraqi reporter and residents said.
At a news briefing, Talabani said more than 50 bodies were pulled from the Tigris.
"We have the full names of those who were killed and those criminals who committed these crimes," he said.
Talabani did not say when or where the bodies had been found. However, he provided the information in response to a question about the search for hostages reportedly seized from the Madain region, south of Baghdad.
Shiite leaders and government officials claimed last week that Sunni militants had abducted as many as 100 Shiite residents from the area, but when Iraqi forces moved into Madain, they found no captives.
In Haditha, taxi drivers Usama Rauf and Ousama Halim said they rushed to the stadium after hearing gunshots and found the bodies lined up against a wall. The reporter and other residents counted 19 bodies and said all appeared to have been shot.
Residents said they believed the victims all men in civilian clothes were soldiers abducted by insurgents as they headed home for a holiday marking the birthday of the prophet Muhammad.
The reporter did not see any military identification documents on the bodies and it was not immediately possible to confirm the claim.
U.S. forces had no report of the incident but were investigating, said 1st Lt. Kate VandenBossche of the U.S. 2nd Marine Division.
Militant violence has surged in the past week, especially in the capital, with explosions often going off one after another in the morning.
Three suicide car bombs, including one targeting a U.S. convoy, and several shootings killed at least six Iraqis in Baghdad on Wednesday. A seventh Iraqi was killed outside Baghdad.
On Tuesday, insurgents killed at least 15 people throughout Iraq, including two U.S. soldiers hit by a suicide bomber in Baghdad, and a former aide to Saddam Hussein's half brother, Sabawi Ibrahim al-Hassan, who was gunned down in southern Iraq, officials said.
A car bomb exploded Wednesday near a U.S. convoy in an area of western Baghdad where the notorious Abu Ghraib prison is located, setting an oil tanker on fire, said police Maj. Moussa Abdulkarim. Two Iraqis were killed and five wounded, said Hussam Abdulrazaq, an official at the nearby al-Yarmouk Hospital. The U.S. military had no immediate information on the incident.
The two other car bombs exploded in southern Baghdad. One missed a police convoy but hit a civilian car, killing two Iraqis and wounding four, said police Capt. Falah al-Muhamadwai. The other exploded in a parking lot near Bilat al-Shuhada police station in Dora area, wounding four civilians, said police Lt. Hassan Falah.
South of the city, one Iraqi policeman was killed and two were seriously wounded when their patrol was hit by a roadside bomb in the town of Mowailha, said police Capt. Muthana Al-Furati.
In Sadr city, a poor section of eastern Baghdad, gunmen in a speeding car shot and killed policeman Ali Talib as he walked toward his car, said Col. Hussein Abdulwahid of the local police force. In another part of east Baghdad, gunmen attacked a Health Ministry car, killing the driver and wounding one unidentified passenger, said police Col. Hassan Jaloub.
On Tuesday night, an attack by a suicide car bomber near an American patrol in southern Baghdad killed two U.S. soldiers and wounded four, said Lt. Col. Clifford Kent, a spokesman for America's 3rd Infantry Division. Seven Iraqi civilians also were wounded, said an Al-Yarmouk Hospital official.
In the southern city of Basra, Abdulal al-Batat, a former aide to Saddam's half brother al-Hassan, was killed Tuesday when gunmen fired at him outside his home, said police Lt. Col. Karim al-Zaydi.
Al-Hassan, who was suspected of financing insurgents after U.S. troops ousted Saddam in 2003, was captured in Syria and turned over to Iraqi authorities in February.
Al-Qaida in Iraq, the nation's most feared terror group, claimed responsibility for Tuesday's worst attack, a suicide bombing near an army recruitment center in Baghdad that police said killed at least six Iraqis and wounded 44.
Also Tuesday, the U.S. military said it regretted an incident in which a Shiite legislator linked to a radical anti-American cleric was briefly held at a checkpoint by American soldiers.
Fattah al-Sheik tearfully told Parliament he had been handcuffed and humiliated at a U.S. checkpoint on his way to work. He claimed an American soldier kicked his car, mocked the legislature, handcuffed him and held him by the neck. The assembly demanded a U.S. apology and prosecution of the soldier involved.
"What happened to me represents an insult to the whole National Assembly that was elected by the Iraqi people. This shows that the democracy we are enjoying is fake," al-Sheik said. "Through such incidents, the U.S. Army tries to show that it is the real controlling power in the country, not the new Iraqi government."
A U.S. military statement said its initial investigation indicated that al-Sheik got into an altercation with a coalition translator at the checkpoint. U.S. soldiers tried to separate them and "briefly held on to the legislator," while preventing another member of al-Sheik's party from getting out of his car.
"We have the highest respect for all members of the Transitional National Assembly. Their safety and security is critically important," U.S. Brig. Gen. Karl R. Horst said in the statement. "We regret this incident occurred and are conducting a thorough investigation."
Al-Sheik's small party has been linked to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who led uprisings against the U.S.-led coalition in 2004. On his way home after the session, gunmen fired on al-Sheik's convoy, but he escaped unharmed, police and his party said.
Iran: Tehran Opposes U.S. Pro-Democracy Initiatives
The United States flaunts the banner of democracy in the Middle East only when that advances its economic, military, or strategic interests. The history of the past six decades shows that whenever there has been conflict between furthering democracy in the region and advancing American national interests, U.S. administrations have invariably opted for the latter course. Furthermore, when free and fair elections in the Middle East have produced results that run contrary to Washington's strategic interests, it has either ignored them or tried to block the recurrence of such events. #msg-6083247
Friday, 22 April 2005
By Bill Samii
U.S. interest in Iranian domestic politics has increased recently. The State Department is looking for democratic organizations or activists to support, and Congress is considering legislation relating to Iran. Iranian opposition groups, meanwhile, are soliciting U.S. support. Tehran does not see these developments in a positive light and claims that the United States has always opposed Iranians' democratic efforts.
Pursuant to a $3 million Congressional appropriation, the U.S. State Department is soliciting proposals from "educational institutions, humanitarian groups, nongovernmental organizations, and individuals inside Iran to support the advancement of democracy and human rights," "USA Today" reported on 11 April, citing the State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. According to "USA Today," the U.S. government already spends approximately $15 million per year on Persian-language broadcasting to Iran.
Iranian Ambassador to the UN Mohammad Javad Zarif denounced the U.S. effort as a violation of the Algiers Accords (which prohibit interference in Iranian internal affairs) and hinted at referring the United States to an international tribunal, "USA Today" reported.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said on 11 April that "none of the activities that are mentioned in the announcement or the ["USA Today"] article are inconsistent with our commitments to the Algiers Accords," according to the State Department website (http://www.usinfo.state.gov). "Supporting democracy and human rights around the world is something the United States does everywhere," Boucher said. "It's not an attempt to decide somebody else's internal affairs."
Iranian state radio commented on 12 April that Washington already supports "isolated and rejected groups or elements" but that this only leads to embarrassment for the United States or these groups. It added that not only have U.S. efforts to cause "anarchy and domestic unrest" in Iran over the last 20 years failed, but they have in fact caused "increased public anger and hatred against America." The commentary concluded: "It seems that the American officials have thrown themselves in a fatal abyss by financing opposition Iranian groups."
Foggy Bottom is not the only place where people are thinking about Iran. Iran is of great interest on Capitol Hill, too.
Two Congressmen -- Bob Filner (Democrat, California) and Tom Tancredo (Republican, Colorado) -- chaired a 6 April Capitol Hill meeting of a "think tank" called the Iran Policy Committee, U.S. Newswire reported. Filner described the meeting as an effort by the Iran Human Rights and Democracy Caucus of the House of Representatives to learn more about Iran and to consider ways to confront it. Tancredo called for an end to the State Department's designation of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group.
Radio Farda reported that the Middle East Subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives discussed legislation relating to Iran on 13 April in Washington, DC. The Iran Freedom Support Act (HR 282) defines its purpose as, "To hold the current regime in Iran accountable for its threatening behavior and to support a transition to democracy in Iran." The legislation calls on the White House to support pro-democracy forces that oppose the Iranian regime.
The legislation is supported by 140 members of the House of Representatives and is stricter in some ways than the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act of 1996. The bill calls for mandatory sanctions for those who help Iran's pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, Radio Farda reported. The legislation also says that independent expatriate Iranian broadcasters should receive funding, and it calls for assistance to pro-democracy forces and groups in the country.
The full International Relations Committee now will consider the legislation, Radio Farda reported, and if it is adopted the entire House will debate it.
Opponents of the Iranian regime -- under the umbrella of the National Convention for a Democratic Secular Republic in Iran -- met in Washington on 14 April to demand U.S. support for their activities. Mujahedin Khalq Organization leader Mariam Rajavi addressed the event via a video link from France. She is not allowed to enter the United States because the MKO is a terrorist organization. Rajavi accused the United States and EU of appeasing the Iranian regime, and she demanded recognition of her cult-like group as a government-in-exile. Several U.S. legislators attended this event. Representatives Filner, Dennis Moore (Republican, Kansas), Ted Poe (Republican, Texas), and Tancredo were there, as were staff members of Kay Bailey Hutchinson (Republican, Texas) and James Talent (Republican, Missouri).
Not surprisingly, Tehran has reacted angrily to these developments.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on 14 April that U.S. statements about promoting democracy in Iran reveal that Washington has a specific timetable in mind, IRNA reported. Khamenei said anonymous "certain individuals" should not be allowed to help what IRNA termed an "interventionist conspiracy."
Supreme National Security Council Secretary Hojatoleslam Hassan Rohani also spoke dismissively about the pro-democracy initiatives in the U.S. "There is sufficient democracy in Iran," he said in an interview that appeared on the Financial Times website on 19 December. "Whenever we have wanted to extend democracy, the Americans have opposed it."
China’s hard to find view of the color revolutions.
U.S./East: Encouraging The Oppositions
By Robert Coalson
10 May 2005 (RFE/RL) -- U.S. President George W. Bush's swing through the former Soviet states of Latvia, Russia, and Georgia was filled with lofty rhetoric on the universal human striving for freedom, as well as with praise for the so-called colored revolutions that have swept through the region.
"Your most important contribution is your example," Bush told a crowd of tens of thousands in Tbilisi's Freedom Square on 10 May. "In recent months, the world has marveled at the hopeful changes taking place from Baghdad to Beirut to Bishkek. But before there was a Purple Revolution in Iraq, or an Orange Revolution in Ukraine, or a Cedar Revolution in Lebanon, there was the Rose Revolution in Georgia."
In an interview with Georgia's Rustavi-2 television on 8 May, Bush said: "I want to go to your country and thank the Georgian people for setting such a good example for other nations to follow." He added that the wave of revolutions in the post-Soviet space "was not planned by anybody or any nation. It was just an inevitable force of human nature because everybody wants to be free."
Dangerous Business?
However, encouraging opposition movements in the former Soviet Union is a potentially dangerous business. In recent weeks, Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and other administration officials have spoken openly of their desire to see Belarus follow Georgia's "example." In a 4 May commentary in "The Washington Times," a conservative newspaper, Jeffrey Kuhner, communications director of the Ripon Society, a Republican policy institute, wrote: "With strong American support, [the Belarusian opposition] may well unleash a 'White Revolution' similar to the Rose and Orange revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine." Kuhner lauded the Bush administration's policy of "helping to bolster the country's growing opposition movement.""I want to go to your country and thank the Georgian people for setting such a good example for other nations to follow."
Belarusian opposition figure Anatol Lyabedzka flew to Georgia in the days before Bush's visit for high-level meetings with Georgian officials, including parliamentarians and Prime Minister Zurab Noghaideli. "This is a very high level," Lyabedzka told obozrevatel.com. "It indicates that Belarus is not a matter of indifference for Georgia. It is very important. People who think alike always understand one another." Lyabedzka also hinted that he would be seeking a meeting with Bush himself.
Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili told the crowd in Freedom Square on 10 May that the Georgian government is committed to helping the United States spread democracy worldwide, including in Belarus.
But the U.S. administration's rhetoric is being heard beyond the confines of Belarus. Oppositionists within Russia are also listening. A group of Chechens living in Georgia demonstrated in Tbilisi on 10 May, calling on the United States to support Chechen independence, Caucasus Press reported. "We hope that George Bush will use his influence with Russia and will promote a political solution of the Chechen people's problems," a demonstrator told the news agency. Likewise, opposition figures in Russia's Republic of Bashkortostan have taken inspiration from the so-called colored revolutions, even taking to wearing orange clothing in emulation of the successful Ukrainian opposition. According to RFE/RL, an opposition group called the Tatar Public Center from another ethnic republic in Russia, Tatarstan, hoped to send protestors to Bush's speech in Tbilisi, although it eventually changed its plans.
PanArmenian.net reported on 6 May that an unnamed Bush administration source had cautioned oppositionists in Armenia and Azerbaijan -- where governments have carried out elections at least as compromised as those that sparked the revolutions in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan -- not to interpret Bush's support for Georgia as a call for revolution in those countries. "We welcome reforms in both power structures and beyond them," the source was quoted as saying. "Opposition forces should be engaged in peaceful democratic processes in Armenia and Azerbaijan." RFE/RL reported that Azerbaijani oppositionists were prevented by Georgian police from unfurling a banner during Bush's 10 May speech in Tbilisi.
On 3 May, about 100 opposition demonstrators rallied outside the U.S. Embassy in the Uzbek capital Tashkent calling for Uzbek President Islam Karimov's ouster. According to "India Daily," the goal of the protest was to "attract U.S. State Department and international attention."
Reaction To Washington's Words
At the same time, the U.S. statements have irked politicians in Russia and China, as well as the entrenched regimes in countries like Belarus. Russian analysts in recent days have been speaking more frequently about a "coordinated campaign" against Russia. Aleksei Zudin, director of the Political Science Department of the Center for Political Strategy, added that the recent comments "are undoubtedly an integral part of the pressure on Russia that began with the so-called colored revolutions," politcom.ru reported on 6 May.
The Beijing magazine "Shijie Zhishi" in April published an analysis entitled "The Background Behind The Color 'Revolutions' In The CIS" that described purported U.S.-led efforts to "fill the political vacuum in this region." The magazine charges that over the last decade, the United States has spent "more than $21 billion" through the Freedom Support Act to "exert influence on the political- and economic-development process in these states." The West "is continually exerting political pressure and creating a 'relaxed' political environment for opposition political forces in these states," the article charges.
With opposition groups encouraged by the successes of anti-establishment revolutions in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan and closely following statements from Washington that seem to be urging them to follow these examples, the danger of crackdowns -- especially in countries like Belarus and Uzbekistan -- has also been heightened. The United States could find itself in a position similar to the one that followed the first Gulf War in 1991, when Kurdish oppositionists felt encouraged to rise up against Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein only to have their uprising savagely put down without substantial assistance from the West.
Dubyaman's Free Reich In democracy, Bush has found a self-legitimising tool for world domination
PREM SHANKAR JHA
It should have been a commemoration, but it turned into mutual recrimination. George W. Bush went to Moscow to "celebrate" the 60th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany and the end of World War II in Europe. The choice was natural because the Soviet Union had been the US's most powerful ally in that war. But this show of togetherness must have been somebody else's idea. George Bush went along, but he had his own agenda. And it had nothing to do with "togetherness".
Bush made his Moscow visit part of a roadshow for his new passion—democracy. First, he sandwiched his visit to Moscow between one to Latvia and another to Georgia.
Bush has realised that empires cannot be built on military force alone, but need hegemony to endure.
Both were countries "freed" from Soviet occupation, and the latter's president had refused to attend the Moscow "celebration". In Latvia, Bush criticised the agreement reached by Roosevelt and Churchill with Stalin at Yalta towards the end of WW II which handed over the three Baltic states and control of a cordon sanitaire of East European countries to the Soviet Union, and called it a crime. He also blamed the Cold War on the Soviet Union's assault on democracy in the countries "ceded" to it.
In Moscow, Bush criticised Putin yet again for having put democracy in reverse gear. He also virtually announced his intention to "free" Belarus, Russia's closest and last ally, from the yoke of Alexander Lukashenko, whom he called Europe's last dictator. This was, of course, a not-so-subtle reminder that the US had used its influence, swaddled in large sums of money, to oust pro-Moscow regimes and usher "democracy" into Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan.
Had his belligerence been no more than a hangover from the Cold War, we could have put it down to poor taste and moved on. But there was nothing unpremeditated about what Bush said or did. With every word and action, Bush proclaimed that under him America no longer respected national boundaries. Sovereignty and non-interference in other nations' internal affairs were things of the past. Regime change was the order of the day, whether in Iraq, Iran, North Korea, or Georgia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan and Belarus. Only the methods employed would differ.
Even Russia was not exempt. Bush used the occasion to warn Putin that if he did not pull up his socks and become a "good democrat" again, Russia could have a "tulip" or "carnation" revolution (depending upon the season) at its next polls. All that was needed to bring his regime crashing down was a rented mob claiming that the election had been rigged, a complaisant international media that keeps it in tight focus and asks pre-scripted questions, and hordes of desperate pensioners and jobless youth looking for a scapegoat to blame for their sudden impoverishment and loss of security after the demise of socialism.
'Regime change' is in fact the new euphemism for the construction of the US empire. And as Bush said, both at the UN last September and again at his second inauguration, every authoritarian regime is a candidate for regime change. The decision to focus on dictatorships does not reflect a sudden conversion to belief in the virtues of democracy. Bush has belatedly realised, possibly after seeing the global hostility aroused by his invasion of Iraq, that empires cannot be built upon military force alone, but need to establish hegemony to endure. Hegemony in turn requires a legitimising ideology—a goal or belief that everyone can identify with. Bush has found his hegemonic ideology in democracy. It is, therefore, essential to his plans for future world domination that he should trash every accommodation made in the past with a non-democratic power, even if his country had fought a war side by side with it. That is where Yalta and the Baltic states fit in.
Ideology often claims to derive its justification from history but actually murders it to suit its purposes. The Yalta conference accepted Stalin's demand for control over a cordon sanitaire between it and a future resurgent Germany because the Soviet Union had already lost more than 20 million people. Roosevelt and Churchill couldn't refuse him because without Russia they could not have won the war. Western politicians choose not to remember that while the Germans held down the whole of western Europe for five years with only six divisions, Russia chewed up and swallowed 185 German divisions. Had Hitler not attacked Russia, western Europe might still have been part of a greater Third Reich.
Bush's concept of democracy is also one that lifelong democrats, like myself, find hard to recognise. While in university we learned that democracy had to be homegrown to take root. In Europe, it was a product of more than a century of struggle against a combine of monarchy, the church and a militarised aristocracy. That struggle could have ended in defeat had the democrats not been reinforced by the fortuitous rise of a new mercantile capitalist class.
We also learned that the consensus to forego the bullet for the ballot to change governments, which lies at the heart of democracy, only holds so long as social and economic conflict are kept below a threshold level. The former requires a separation of the church from the state, and the latter a strong middle class to act as a buffer between the rich and the poor. None of the countries to which Bush has carried the banner of democracy satisfies either criterion. In Iraq, the overwhelming majority of the dominant Shias want an Islamic republic, whatever that may be. In East Europe, there is not even the beginnings of a middle class. Imposing the template of democracy on such societies is likely to yield freakish results. Imposing it by force at the expense of destroying a pre-existent state can lead to chaos.
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