AFP – “Bahraini authorities should immediately investigate… allegations of torture and guarantee the physical and psychological well-being of the four men,” Joe Stork, the deputy Middle East director at HRW, said in the late-Wednesday statement. Abduljalil al-Singace, a leading figure in the mainly-Shiite opposition association Haq, told Bahrain’s attorney general in late August that he had been tortured by security forces while in detention over the previous 15 days, HRW said. Read Article
Financial Times – Wheat prices rose further on Friday morning in the wake of Russia’s decision to extend its grain export ban by 12 month, raising fears about a return to the food shortages and riots of 2007-08. In Mozambique, where a 30 per cent rise in bread prices triggered riots on Wednesday and Thursday, the government said seven people had been killed along with 288 wounded. The announcement by Vladimir Putin on Thursday extended an export ban first announced last month until late December 2011, sending wheat and other cereals prices to near a two-year high. Read Article
Daily Times – Former British premier Tony Blair warned in an interview on Wednesday that the international community may have ‘no alternative’ to taking military action against Iran if it develops a nuclear weapon. “I am saying that I think it is wholly unacceptable for Iran to have a nuclear weapons capability and I think we have got to be prepared to confront them, if necessary militarily,” he said in extracts pre-released by the BBC from an interview to publicise his memoirs. “I think there is no alternative to that if they continue to develop nuclear weapons. They need to get that message loud and clear.” Read Article
Digital Journal – US Army officials expect an increase of unmanned aircraft flights in Iraq despite the government’s decision to withdraw some of its American combat troops. The US Army is predicting flight hours for drones will increase as the mission in Iraq changes due to a much-publicized troop withdrawal, even as President Barack Obama announced on Saturday that “the war is ending.” Read Article
The Guardian – The British government has ordered an urgent inquiry into the disappearance of an injured Iraqi child who has not been seen since being placed in the care of UK military medics in 2003. In one of the most bewildering episodes of the Iraq occupation, Memmon Salam al-Maliki, an 11-year-old boy, disappeared within days of being taken to a British base after he was wounded while playing with unexploded munitions. Although his injuries appeared not to be life-threatening, his family have not seen him since. Read Article
BBC – Four Israelis have been shot dead in the West Bank, Israeli police say. Their vehicle came under fire on a road between the settlement of Kiryat Arba and the Palestinian village of Bani Naim, near the city of Hebron. The military wing of the Palestinian Islamist movement, Hamas, said it had carried out the “heroic operation”. Read Article
Press TV – Less than a week ahead of the US-backed talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, Tel Aviv insists on resuming its West Bank settlement expansions. In November, Israel announced a 10-month freeze on West Bank settlements which excluded the projects in East al-Quds (Jerusalem) and allowed construction of schools, synagogues and ‘community centers.’ “There is a government decision to freeze construction only for 10 months, and when that period ends, the decision is no longer valid,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a meeting of Likud ministers on Sunday, the Jerusalem Post reported. Read Article
Reuters – The U.S. military formally ends combat operations in Iraq on Tuesday as President Barack Obama seeks to fulfill a promise to end the war despite persistent instability and attacks that kill dozens at a time. U.S. troop numbers were cut to 50,000 in advance of the August 31 milestone in the 7-1/2-year-old war launched by Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, whose stated aim was to destroy Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. No such weapons was found. Read Article
Huffington Post – When federal investigators discovered that the manager of a Saudi Arabian company paid bribes to win two lucrative subcontracts supplying food to American troops in Iraq, they naturally wanted to know more. Did he act on his own? Had U.S. taxpayers been cheated? Five years later, investigators are still largely in the dark. They suspect similar activities by other subcontractors may have tainted contracts worth up to $300 million. But the investigators are unable to uncover even basic information, such as how the manager of the Saudi company had come up with $133,000 in bribe money. Read Article
New York Times – In a pastel-colored room at the Baghdad morgue known simply as the Missing, where faces of the thousands of unidentified dead of this war are projected onto four screens, Hamid Jassem came on a Sunday searching for answers. In a blue plastic chair, he sat under harsh fluorescent lights and a clock that read 8:58 and 44 seconds, no longer keeping time. With deference and patience, he stared at the screen, each corpse bearing four digits and the word “majhoul,” or unknown: No. 5060 passed, with a bullet to the right temple; 5061, with a bruised and bloated face; 5062 bore a tattoo that read, “Mother, where is happiness?” The eyes of 5071 were open, as if remembering what had happened to him. Read Article
Reuters – As U.S. combat operations come to a close on Tuesday 7-1/2 years after the invasion, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis like Abboud, who fled mixed-sect neighborhoods at a time when bodies were piling up in the streets overnight, are living in squalor. Many Iraqis fear the reduction in U.S. troops and their full withdrawal next year will re-ignite sectarian bloodshed. The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, says the Iraq war produced the worst humanitarian crisis in the Middle East since 1948, when half the Arab population of Palestine fled their homes after the creation of Israel. According to the UNHCR, 1.5 million people are displaced inside Iraq, of which 500,000 are squatting in camps or public buildings. In Baghdad, 200,000 people live in 120 camps. There are also hundreds of thousands of Iraqis abroad, mainly in neighboring Jordan and Syria. Read Article
Press TV – Israel is reportedly preparing to strike arms depots and weapons manufacturing plants in Syria, claiming they belong to the Islamic resistance movement Hezbollah, a report says. Tel Aviv has escalated its military presence in the occupied Golan Heights and the northern part of the Shebaa Farms, the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz said, citing a report in the Saturday edition of the Kuwaiti daily Al Rai. Read Article
LA Times – The $53-billion reconstruction effort is not without its successes. But poor planning, violence and a failure to consult Iraqis derailed many projects, which may offer lessons in Afghanistan. The shell of a prison that will never be used rises from the desert on the edge of this dusty town north of Baghdad, a hulking monument to the wasted promise of America’s massive, $53-billion reconstruction effort in Iraq. Construction began in May 2004 at a time when U.S. money was pouring into the country. It quickly ran into huge cost overruns. Violence erupted in the area, and a manager was shot dead in his office. The Iraqi government said it didn’t want or need the prison. In 2007 the project was abandoned, but only after $40 million of U.S. taxpayer money had been spent. Read Article
Al Jazerra – Two vessels carrying 46 international human rights activists have reached the Gaza Strip, despite Israel’s strict 14-month siege of the Palestinian territory. The end of the mission to symbolically break the siege came after Israel backed down from an earlier warning to the ‘Free Gaza’ protest group not to breach the blockade. Read Article
AFP — Blackwater private security firm founder Erik Prince was questioned on Monday in Abu Dhabi in connection with a fraud lawsuit filed by former employees that seeks millions of dollars in damages. Read Article
AP — Iraq’s prime minister put his nation on its highest level of alert for terror attacks, warning of plots to sow fear and chaos as the U.S. combat mission in the country formally ends on Tuesday. The Iraqi security forces who will be left in charge of guarding the nation have been hammered by near-daily bomb attacks, prompting criticism of the government’s readiness for the American troop drawdown. Read Article
BBC – The Independent research organisation Iraq Body Count has called for a full judicial enquiry in Britain into the number of people killed and wounded in the Iraq War. The organisation says the Iraq War Inquiry in London chaired by Sir John Chilcot failed to address the issue. The BBC’s Owen Bennett-Jones has been looking at the research that has been carried out into how many civilians died as a result of the Iraq war. Read Article
UN Dispatch – The sluggish international response to the Pakistan floods emergency is actually not all that sluggish, at least compared to these humanitarian crises. Introducing the five most under-funded and ignored humanitarian crises:
- Iraqi Refugees
- Guatemala — Tropical Storm Agatha
- Uganda
- Central African Republic
- Civil Unrest in Kyrgyzstan READ MORE ABOUT THESE
Jewish Chronicle – Tony Blair has declared himself “a passionate believer in Israel” and has said that there is a “collective duty… to argue vigorously against the de-legitimisation of Israel.” The Quartet representative and former UK prime minister and made the comments at a symposium at IDC University in Herzliya. Mr Blair called on European leaders not to “apply rules to the government of Israel that you would never dream of applying to your own country. Read Article
Voice of America – Police in Iraq say insurgents have killed six members of a Sunni militia allied with U.S. forces against al-Qaida. The Sahwa (Awakening) fighters were killed in a village in Diyala province Thursday, a day after a string of apparently coordinated attacks killed at least 55 people across Iraq. Read Article
Al Bawaba – There are growing fears in the Gulf region of an imminent clash with Iran following the launch of Bushehr nuclear facility. Although Western circles downplay the importance of the facility to Iran’s efforts to develop atomic bombs, the Arab states in the Gulf region believe the potential of military action against Iran exists. The ongoing threats towards Iran by Tel Aviv and Washington come with practical preparations for a possible war such as the deployment of Patriot missiles in Kuwait. Read Article
CNN – Gunmen attacked two checkpoints manned by members of Iraq’s Awakening movement in towns north of Baghdad on Thursday, killing a local leader of the movement and seven other people, Iraqi police said. Another attack killed a police officer in Falluja, west of the capital late Thursday, police there told CNN. But most of the dead were in Dali Abbas, a village about 100 km (63 miles) north of Baghdad. Read Article
Press TV – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spends the time he was supposed to meet with the visiting head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog, on vacation. Netanyahu’s office cancelled the meeting, saying “he would speak on the telephone to the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] Yukiya Amano later this week,” Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz reported on Tuesday. The IAEA director general is on his first visit to Israel, having asked to hold talks with the premier months ago Read Article
Discovery News – As American troops begin their partial withdrawal from Iraq this week, the war begins a new process of wiggling its way into the history books. But exactly how future generations will view America’s time in Iraq — now seven years, three months and counting — is under debate. To make sense of it all, experts usually turn first to numbers. Lives lost, money spent, measures of success: For any war, these statistics, or metrics, can begin to paint a picture of an era. VIEW SLIDE SHOW
New York Times – Insurgents unleashed a wave of coordinated attacks across Iraq on Wednesday in a demonstration of their ability to strike at will, offering their counterpoint to American aspirations of bringing the war in Iraq “to a responsible end.” In attacks in 13 towns and cities, from southernmost Basra to restive Mosul in northern Iraq, insurgents deployed their full arsenal: hit-and-run shootings, roadside mines and more than a dozen car bombs. The toll was in the dozens, but the symbolism underscored a theme of America’s experience here: Its deadlines, including the Aug. 31 date to end combat operations, have rarely reflected the tumultuous reality on the ground and have often been accompanied by a wave of insurgent attacks. Read Article
