september 2004

Press round on Iraq's new leaders

The Middle Eastern press largely blame US allies in Iraq for a week of bloodshed in Shia cities though some accuse radical cleric Moqtada Sadr of aggravating the situation.

At a time when US forces are storming Najaf... the position of the Iraqi transitional government, which is supposed to look after the interests of the Iraqi people and restore stability, is like a grenade on the muzzle of a launcher.

Saudi Arabia - editorial in Al-Watan
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The storming of Najaf by US soldiers to arrest followers of the youthful Shia leader Moqtada Sadr will only inflame the situation further and will not quell the resistance against occupation...

It seems the transitional government did not evaluate the risks involved in storming Najaf to arrest members of the armed Mehdi Army, something that led to fires blazing in other areas like Baghdad, Amara, Diwaniya and Kut.

Egypt - editorial in Al-Ahram
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Butchery alone is the only way to take control and impose authority in Iraq... Those Iraqis or non-Iraqis who achieved such a lot by historically overthrowing Saddam today find themselves promoting Saddamism, without Saddam.

London-based Al-Hayat - commentary by Abd-al-Wahab Badrkhan
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They came to please the Iraqi people but they have increased their misery... If US foreign policy continues in this way, it will ignite a political, security and social blaze across the world, burning everyone to different degrees.

London-based Al-Sharq al-Awsat - commentary by Zayn al-Abidin
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It is high time an end was put to the practice of using mosques and other religious sites for military purposes. To allow it to continue is to mock people's beliefs. It is ultimately a cowardly practice more indicative of a psychotic than a political state.

Iraq - commentary in Al-Sharq al-Awsat
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Sadr has achieved nothing by delivering blood and fire to Iraq and Najaf for a week, desecrating the shrine [of Imam Ali], destroying the influence of leading Shia clerics and weakening moderate Shia...

The biggest mistake by the group led by Sadr, or better to say manipulated by him, was to take shelter at the Imam Ali shrine to begin his resistance, and this caused the assaults on the shrine.

Iran - editorial in Sharq
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From day one, [Iyad] Allawi's government adopted a method opposed to consensus and unity. His first option was to play the sectarian card against Sadr, which coincided with [Israeli Prime Minister] Sharon-like destruction of houses in Falluja on the pretext they harboured terrorists.

London-based Al-Quds Al-Arabi - commentary by Abd-al-Wahab al-Afandi
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The atrocities the US forces committed in Falluja and those which the Anglo-American troops and their allies are committing today in Najaf and other Iraqi cities amount to systematic genocide masquerading as anti-terrorist measures against so-called infiltrators from neighbouring states: US allegations readily echoed by a puppet Iraqi government allied to the US and the host of old and new colonialists.

Iraq - from commentary by Mudhir Arif, secretary-general of the Iraqi Greens Party, in Al-Manar Al-Yawm
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Recent developments prove that the United States does not think about anything short of full domination over Iraq... What has encouraged the Americans to continue their bullying approach is a total lull by international bodies, most importantly the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC).

Iran - editorial in Iran News
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The fact that the agreement between the Najaf militia and trusted political groups was violated, indicates that a dangerous scenario has been planned to suppress and isolate the country's Shia majority. The provocative acts came shortly after the illogical remarks of the Iraqi defence and interior ministers, who claimed that the Islamic Republic was interfering in Iraq's internal affairs.

Iran - editorial in Tehran Times

BBC Monitoring, based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.

IRAQ'S NEW LEADERS ROUND ON THE PRESS
    Police Fire at Reporters as U.S. Tanks Roll up to Shrine
    By Adrian Blomfield
    The Telegraph U.K.

    Monday 16 August 2004

    The bullet that whistled through the lobby of the Sea Hotel in Najaf yesterday, embedding shards of glass into a foreign reporter's cheek before lodging itself in an air-conditioning unit, carried an unmistakeable message: "Get out."     Journalists working in Iraq have long lived with the danger of being targeted by insurgents fighting US-led forces and their Iraqi allies.     But in Najaf the roles have been abruptly reversed. Now the Iraqi police threaten journalists, and the insurgents welcome them.

    As US marines and Iraqi security forces resumed their operation to evict insurgents from the Shrine of Ali, the holiest place in Shia Islam, the Iraqi interim government decided yesterday to treat the media as the enemy.

    The authoritarian stance towards the press seems redolent of the days of Saddam Hussein. The Iraqi government has closed the offices of al-Jazeera, the most important Arab satellite station, accusing it of inciting the insurgents.

    In Najaf journalists were summoned yesterday morning by the city's police chief, Ghalab al-Jazeera. It was said that he wanted to parade some captured members of Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi army, who have launched their second uprising in four months.     Instead the police chief delivered a blunt warning: journalists had two hours to leave Najaf or face arrest. Mr Jazeera's official explanation for the decision was that police guarding the hotel had found 550 lbof dynamite in a car nearby. That seems unlikely.     The police rarely venture out of their stations and the street outside the hotel is almost always deserted.

    Mr Jazeera's expressions of concern were quickly followed by a thinly veiled attack on the foreign press.     "We know you are neutral journalists despite the fact you did not report the bad actions by Sadr's people when they beheaded and burned innocent people and the Iraqi police," he said.

    For good measure, Mr Jazeera also threatened to arrest Iraqi drivers and translators working for the press corps if we did not comply. The 30-odd journalists staying at the Sea Hotel decided to stay in Najaf.     Shortly after the deadline expired, the first bullets struck the building. But the sniper was almost certainly an Iraqi policeman, given that the Mahdi army fighters were more than two miles away.

    Then armed police raided the hotel and tried to arrest the journalists, before imposing a new two-hour deadline to leave the city.     A deputation of journalists was denied an audience with Najaf's governor, Adnan al-Zurufi. The policeman outside his office was brusque. "If you do not leave by the deadline we will shoot you," he said.     That was enough for all but a handful of British and American journalists who hunkered down in the hotel as the deadline expired.     As night fell, shots were fired at the roof of the hotel, from where reporters file their stories.

    Sadr's fighters are more press-friendly. The cleric's aides frequently drop into the hotel to brief journalists, or take us to the shrine to meet Sadr or his spokesmen.     In Basra, Sadr's lieutenants ordered the release of James Brandon, a reporter taken hostage by Mahdi army renegades on Thursday night.

    It was not hard to see why Iraq's interim government might prefer journalists out of the city.
    On Saturday, negotiations with Mahdi army militants holed up in the Imam Ali shrine broke down and a ceasefire was called off.

    The options facing the US marines and their Iraqi allies are grim. An offensive on the shrine, burial place of Imam Ali, cousin of the prophet Mohammed and inspiration for Shia Islam, is likely to push moderate Shias over to Sadr's side.     America would prefer the fledgling Iraqi security services to carry out the attack, but they are poorly equipped and trained and unlikely to succeed.     Gunfire sounded in Najaf all yesterday. By nightfall US tanks had moved to within a few hundred yards of the shrine.

© Copyright 2004 by TruthOut.org

CAIRO, August 6 (IslamOnline.net) - The only effect the so-called power transfer in Iraq has had on the situation in Iraq was "Afghanizing" the media coverage of the war-torn country, as the only change on the ground was "for the worse", according to a leading columnist in a major US daily Friday, August 6.

"A funny thing happened after the United States transferred sovereignty over Iraq. On the ground, things didn't change, except for the worse," Paul Krugman, the opinion-editor of New York Times said.

"But as Matthew Yglesias of The American Prospect puts it, the cosmetic change in regime had the effect of ‘Afghanizing’ the media coverage of Iraq," he added in an article under the heading "What About Iraq?".

Krugman explained that Yeglesias is referring to "the way news coverage of Afghanistan dropped off sharply after the initial military defeat of the Taliban".

"A nation we had gone to war to liberate and had promised to secure and rebuild - a promise largely broken - once again became a small, faraway country of which we knew nothing," he said about Afghanistan.

Coverage

Krugman states how the same twist took place as far as Iraq was concerned after the handover of power.

"Incredibly, the same thing happened to Iraq after June 28. Iraq stories moved to the inside pages of newspapers, and largely off TV screens. Many people got the impression that things had improved.

"Even journalists were taken in: a number of newspaper stories asserted that the rate of US losses there fell after the handoff. (Actual figures: 42 American soldiers died in June, and 54 in July.)," said the prominent columnist.

The trouble with this shift of attention, he opined, is that if people don't have a clear picture of what's actually happening in Iraq, they won't be able to open a serious discussion of the options that remain for making the best of a very bad situation.

The military reality in Iraq is that there has been no letup in attacks against occupation forces, and large parts of the country seem to be effectively under the control of groups hostile to the US-backed government, according to Krugman.

More than 15 US soldiers were wounded in a fresh flare-up  of clashes with Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia in Iraq Friday, in which more than 50 people were killed in the midst of no security and a Us chopper was shot down.

"And everywhere, of course, the mortar attacks, bombings, kidnappings and assassinations go on."

Lack Of Services

The US columnist also noted that earlier promises made by Washington to Iraqis seeking better life standards and safety before the invasion of the oil-rich country have not materialized.

"This summer, like last summer, there are severe shortages of electricity. Sewage is tainting the water supply, and typhoid and hepatitis are on the rise.

"Unemployment remains sky-high. Needless to say, all this undermines any chance for the new Iraqi government to gain wide support."

Krugman dismissed his point in describing all this bad news is not to be defeatist, but rather to set some realistic context for the political debate.

He said calls for American forces to "stay the course" are fatuous, as "the course we're on leads downhill".

"American soldiers keep winning battles, but we're losing the war: our military is under severe strain; we're creating more terrorists than we're killing; our reputation, including our moral authority, is damaged each month this goes on," read the article of the opinion editor of the American daily.

End Occupation

The famous American columnist called on the US forces to end their position as an occupying power.

"We need to move quickly to end our position as an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land, the fate that none other than former President George H. W. Bush correctly warned could be the result of an invasion of Iraq," he said.

"And that means turning real power over to Iraqis.

"Again and again since the early months after the fall of Baghdad - when Paul Bremer III canceled local elections in order to keep the seats warm for our favorite exiles - US officials have passed up the chance to promote credible Iraqi leaders. And each time the remaining choices get worse."

Krugman added: "Yet we're still doing it. Ayad Allawi is, probably, something of a thug. Still, it's in our interests that he succeed.

"But when Allawi proposed an amnesty for "insurgents" - a move that was obviously calculated to show that he wasn't an American puppet - American officials, probably concerned about how it would look at home, stepped in to insist that "insurgents" who have killed Americans be excluded.

Inevitably, Krugman sees this suggestion that American lives matter more than Iraqi lives led to an unraveling of the whole thing.

Allawi, had earlier admitted that he had run an organization that carried out a bombing campaign, in collaboration with the CIA , in Iraq in the 1990s to topple then President Saddam Hussein, "now looks like a puppet."

"But we should get realistic, and look in earnest for an exit," the American writer concluded.

On May 26, The New York Times admitted in an unusual mea culpa published substantial problems with its coverage of Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction and links to terrorism, saying it was misled by Iraqi exiles and American intelligence.

The Times published a number of articles backing claims that Iraq possessed WMDs - none of which has been found more than one year after the U.S.-led occupation of the oil-rich country.

US Forces Arrest Iraqi Editor
Aljazeera.net
Aljazeera and Agencies
8-2-4

US occupation forces in Iraq have arrested Dr Muthana Harith al-Dhari the editor of al-Basaer newspaper (Insight) and media officer for the influential Association of Muslim Scholars.

 

"US forces arrested Muthana Harith al-Dhari this morning as he turned up at the Um al-Quraa mosque, the headquarters of the committee," Ahmad Abd Al-Ghafur al-Sammarai of the AMS, Iraq's leading Sunni authority, said.   "This is the work of the occupation forces. They're here to intimidate and terrorise people not to rebuild our country," he added.

  Al-Sammarai said he had no idea why al-Dhari had been arrested and called for all detainees of the occupation forces in Iraq to be released.

 

 

Witness speaks out

 

Aljazeera interviewed Amar Abd Al-Karim, who was accompanying al-Dhari when he was arrested, and he says the US forces stopped Dr al-Dhari's convoy and took him into custody.

 

"We were on our way to the headquarters of the AMS, going out from the studio of the LBC (Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation), where Dr al-Dhari had given an interview. "A US patrol emerged suddenly and stopped our convoy. They searched the cars, and then asked us to step aside and called for reinforcements.

 

"A number of Humvees arrived with detecting devices. They gave us body scans, and told us that Dr Muthana and two of his companions were to be arrested because the device detected remains of explosives on Dr al-Dhari's hands."

 

Abd Al-Karim said the group was enraged at the US's allegations and stressed that Dr al-Dhari was a guest in a TV interview.   "The US soldiers at the scene told us either we shut up, or we would be arrested with Dr al-Dhari," he said.

 

Appeal to journalists

 

Sabah Ahmad, the technical manager of the al-Basaer newspaper, told Aljazeera.net the staff condemned the arrest of their editor which they considered an illegal act.   "Journalists in Iraq condemn the arrest of Dr Muthana and we will ask media unions inside and outside Iraq to interfere and call on the US to free him.   "It appears that he was arrested for saying something in a broadcast interview that the US occupation authorities did not like," Ahmad said.

 

 

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/25B2BED2-6
20D-4C37-ADD1-BF36D5654C6A.htm