Elite Iraqi "Wolf Brigade" attacked

[Moses]

Eight members of elite Iraqi force killed; Sunnis form alliance



BAGHDAD, Iraq Eight members of an elite Interior Ministry force have been killed in an ambush in Iraq.

Their 20-vehicle convoy came under attack in downtown Beiji (BAY'-zhee), north of Baghdad.


Two U-S Army Apache attack helicopters responded. Associated Press Television News footage shows them firing on targets near the ambush site.

The attack comes amid accusations by minority Sunni Muslims that the elite force, known as the Wolf Brigade, was involved in recent killings of Sunni clerics.

Meanwhile, Sunni Muslim groups in Iraq are joining forces. A thousand Sunnis assembled in Baghdad today and formed an alliance of religious, political and tribal groups to push for a stronger role in the government.

As their first act, the group called for the resignation of the Shiite interior minister, accusing his office of having a role in the killing of several Sunni clerics.

He denies the allegations, and says he won't step down.

---

Copyright 2005 Associated Press.

[Moses]

Many Iraqis See Sectarian Roots in New Killings

Thaier al-Sudani/Reuters
Friends and relatives prayed at the funeral on May 18 of Hassan al-Nuaimi, a Sunni Arab cleric whose body was found in an empty lot in Baghdad. Theories about the unsolved killing have a distinctly sectarian tinge.



By SABRINA TAVERNISE
Published: May 27, 2005


BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 26 - No one knows who tortured and killed Hassan al-Nuaimi, a Sunni Arab cleric whose body was found in an empty lot here last week, with a hole drilled in his head and both eyes missing. But the various theories have a distinctly sectarian tinge.

The Shiite police chief investigating the death said he suspected Sunni Arab extremists who have driven much of the insurgency in Iraq, much of it aimed at Shiites. The Sunni family mourning the cleric pointed the finger at the Badr Organization, a Shiite militia. But with Mr. Nuaimi buried, the truth, as so often with killings in Iraq, seems to be lost in rumor and allegations.

The only sure thing is that Mr. Nuaimi and another Sunni man who helped write sermons were killed within 12 hours of their disappearance from a mixed Sunni-Shiite neighborhood in northeast Baghdad.

Their deaths, amid violence that has taken more than 550 lives across Iraq this month, renewed concern that the bloodshed may be shifting ever more toward crudely sectarian killings.

Hard-line Sunni leaders have pressed the case. "The killing in Iraq now is according to religious identity," said Sheik Abdel Nasir al-Janabi, a religious Sunni and a hard-line member of the National Dialogue Council, a Sunni political group that claims to have ties to the insurgency. "Now you're killed because you're a Sunni Arab."

Shiite leaders, including Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most powerful Shiite cleric, have responded to such talk with calls for calm and renewed appeals to Shiites that they place their trust in Iraq's fledgling democracy, not revenge killings.

But the urgency of the Shiite leaders' appeals reflects a deepening fear that the welter of allegations about Shiite death squads going after Sunni Arabs, true or false, may create a new reality, prompting still more sectarian killings and pushing the country ever closer to the brink of civil war.

"We are drifting into a sectarian society," said Ghassan al-Atiyya, a secular Shiite and the director of the Iraqi Foundation for Development and Democracy, a Baghdad research institute. "The Americans, instead of strengthening liberal and secular, they are now hostage of Sciri," he said, referring to a religious Shiite political group, "and Kurds."

"They let the genie out of the bottle," Mr. Atiyya said.

Iraq's Shiite majority were the main victims of Saddam Hussein's repression and have been among the principal targets of the insurgents. On Monday insurgents killed at least 33 Shiites in three car bomb attacks in Iraq, and on Thursday two members of Shiite political parties were assassinated.

For the past year Shiites have been attacked at mosques, weddings, funerals and crowded marketplaces. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the most ruthless insurgent leader, has urged still more killing, calling Shiites "apostates" and usurpers of the Sunni Arab primacy in Iraq that ended with the overthrow of Mr. Hussein. On Wednesday his group boasted of killing Shiites in the northern city of Tal Afar.

But when Iraq got its first-ever Shiite majority government three weeks ago, the transition was accompanied by a new wave of terror that included attacks on Sunni Arab leaders, including clerics, and even fruit and vegetable sellers. Sunni leaders have blamed Shiite militias that they say work behind the scenes with official army and police forces, a charge that Shiites deny.

Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari suggested Thursday that there might be some truth in Sunni allegations of Shiite death squads. "I am alarmed," Dr. Jaafari said. "We will act very strongly against those who take the law into their own hands."

Sunni leaders have accused Shiite-led security forces of raiding mosques, arresting more than 300 Sunni clerics and worshipers, and killing several of them, including Mr. Nuaimi. His family has said he was taken from his home by men wearing Iraqi security force uniforms.

On Monday the Iraqi Islamic Party, a Sunni political group, condemned several sets of killings that it said had been carried out by government forces.

Sheik Khalaf al-Aliyan, a member of the National Dialogue Council, a coalition of Sunni political leaders, said he had evidence that Shiite political parties had drawn up a list of 4,000 Sunnis they intended to assassinate, a charge that Shiite leaders have dismissed as preposterous.

"We are approaching the red line," said Saleh Mutlak, a moderate member of the council, which has also urged Sunni participation in the political process.

Most Iraqis, whether Shiite or Sunni, Arab or Kurd, Muslim or Christian, have held tightly to a legend about the Iraqi past. Iraqis, they say, have never defined themselves primarily by religion or ethnic origin but have submerged themselves in a common identity as Iraqis. Even now, reporters who ask people which community they belong to tend to get a common answer. "I am Iraqi," men and women will say, or, with equal insistence, "I am a Muslim."

Even so, in the last two years a strengthened sense of religious and ethnic identity began to course through Iraqi Shiite and Kurdish communities, which had endured the most repression under Mr. Hussein. Moderate Sunnis worry that the newfound identity combined with Shiites' and Kurds' new positions of power may deepen sectarian rifts.

"I came back to Iraq with the assumption that these religious and sectarian tendencies were not that strong," said Adnan Pachachi, 81, a Sunni statesman and former foreign minister, who returned from exile in 2003 and became one of the most trusted advisers of the American occupation authorities. "But in times of trouble people tend to go toward religion, and the religious parties make use of that very skillfully."

The shift in power has been a major irritant. Shiites, for years a downtrodden underclass, took power in elections in January and now control Iraq's government, Parliament and much of its police and security forces. Sunni Arabs, who ran Iraq from the time of the Ottoman Empire, are chafing under that rule but have little leverage after boycotting the elections.

That has left Sunni Arabs with a bitterness that leaves them more open to hard-liners' appeals.

"There's a sense of alienation and embitterment among Sunnis," said Hassan al-Bazzaz, an international relations professor at Baghdad University and director of a center that studies public opinion. "Maybe that's why a lot of them are ready to share suspicions about what's happening."

A sampling of opinions at Friday Prayer at Baghdad's main hard-line Sunni mosque, called the Mother of All Battles, showed sharp Sunni Arab anger at Shiites, while Shiites near Al Mohsen Mosque in Sadr City, a Shiite district, expressed little or no anger.

For Sunnis, perhaps the strongest symbol of Shiite bullying is the Shiite militia called the Badr Brigade. The group was formed in the 1980's in Iran as a fighting force of Iraqi Shiites opposed to Mr. Hussein. Many of its members returned after the American invasion. The group was ordered to disband but still exists informally, with a former member now running the Interior Ministry.

Saad Qindeel, the head of the political bureau of the party affiliated with the group, said it had put down its weapons and become a civil organization. But an American official and Iraqi officials say the group is used to gather intelligence.

There was evidence of that in at least one set of arrests two weeks ago, when according to a Shiite commander of an army commando unit called the Wolf Brigade, Badr intelligence pointed out three Palestinians and an Iraqi who they said had carried out a suicide bombing in Baghdad.

"They are very active," Mr. Pachachi said of the Badr Brigade. "This is the fear that many Sunnis have, that the Badr Brigade will be using the great advantage of being in the government to strengthen their position and try to defeat their opponents."

And small signs of sectarian strife have surfaced in Baghdad neighborhoods.

In a mysterious incident earlier this month, a Shiite student at the Baghdad University College of Pharmacy was killed after arguing with a Sunni dean over a rally he wanted to hold to celebrate the new government. Protests ensued, and the college was closed for several days.

A rash of five or six arrests of Sunni businessmen in the last two weeks has raised concerns among wealthy Sunnis that a campaign is being waged against them. "Anybody who is Sunni and has money is a target," said one member of the Iraqi Bankers Association, who declined to give his name out of fear that he would be arrested. "This is a witch hunt."

Shiite leaders, now in power, have called for restraint despite the killings of Shiites. Even Moktada alSadr, a notoriously rebellious cleric who led an uprising against Americans last summer, offered himself as a mediator on Sunday night.

At the funeral of a Shiite cleric who was gunned down in his car last week, the words of Abdel Karim al-Jazaery, a close friend of the cleric, were typical.

"The point is to make Muslims two parts, to divide the good people, Sunni and Shiite," Mr. Jazaery said of the killers. "God willing, they won't succeed."

Outside the funeral tent, members of the Wolf Brigade stood guard.

---

John F. Burns contributed reporting for this article.

[Moses]

from the June 07, 2005 edition - www.csmonitor.com/2005/0607/p01s03-woiq.html


A TV ICON: The Wolf Brigade's Abul Waleed greets his men.
HADI MIZBAN/AP


Iraqi reality-TV hit takes fear factor to another level

By Neil MacDonald | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

BAGHDAD - Forget the worm-eating contestants on "Fear Factor." And don't look for teen singers trying to become the next "Iraqi Idol." Here in Iraq, reality TV has a grittier visage.

In one recent opening scene of "Terrorism in the Grip of Justice," viewers see a group of tired, scruffy men sitting on bare ground, squinting in the glare of floodlights and waiting to confess.

The camera then pans to Abul Waleed, the mustachioed, red-bereted commander of the elite Wolf Brigade police squad. Waleed is addressing about 30 terrorism suspects hauled in during Operation Lightning, a massive Iraqi-led sweep (now in its second week) aimed at rooting out car bombers and other insurgents in Baghdad.

"Grip of Justice" dominates the 9 p.m. to 10 p.m. time slot in Iraq - at least anecdotally. There are no Nielsen ratings here.

It's broadly popular and considered a key tool in fighting the insurgency. But critics say the show violates prisoner rights by publicly humiliating suspects before they are proven guilty. As domestic detainees, these men are not covered by Geneva Convention rules for prisoners of war. But even so, "the Iraqi government is still bound to treat prisoners in a dignified way under international human rights law," explains Naz Modirzadeh, assistant professor of international human rights law at the American University in Cairo (AUC) "Public humiliation is a no-no."

But supporters say the nightly show helps Iraq fight an insurgency that has no qualms about using video-tapes of beheadings to sow terror. Many Iraqis say they welcome the program as proof that their government is doing something - anything - to make the country safe.

Commander Waleed, who first pitched the idea for a reality show about the work of his force to local TV producers in the northern city of Mosul late last year, says he "wanted to expose the falsehood of jihad," or holy war, against the US-backed government. "Terrorists are sick spirits," he says. The show was soon picked up by national network Al Iraqiya and quickly became a sensation, with families and friends gathering nightly to watch detailed confessions by the insurgency's formerly mysterious gunmen, car bombers, and kidnappers.

Viewers here say the show is "watched by everyone," even those who sympathize with the insurgents. Some observers say the airing of the "Grip of Justice" on the state-run, US-funded Al Iraqiya three months ago represented a major turning point in the government's battle for hearts and minds, capping the success of the Jan. 30 elections.

Col. Thomas Hammes, an insurgency expert at National Defense University in Washington, called the show a "powerful first step" in undermining the insurgency. "Obviously, the first thing the government has to do is convince people that it can govern, so that they see the value of coming forward with information," he says.

US officers in Iraq say that the nightly show has encouraged more Iraqis to come in with intelligence tips.

Yet the show may also be raising Sunni-Shiite sectarian tensions. Hard-line Sunni rejectionists list the Wolf Brigade and its Shiite commander among their prime enemies in the new political order. As the show has gained fame, preacher Abdel Salam Qubaysi has condemned the televised humiliation of Sunni prisoners, thundering in one Friday sermon, "Al Iraqiya is not Iraqi."

The most familiar part of the show are the confessions, which frequently link suspects to atrocities reported on the news. There is little doubt among Iraqis that the captives really are terrorists. Iraqi journalist Salam Jihad, who was detained by insurgents for several hours on a desert highway late last year, says he later saw one of his captors turn up on the show.

In a recent episode, three insurgents sat sullenly, confessing to their role in the kidnappings and murders of Shiite residents around Salman Pak, south of Baghdad. One suspect, named Muhsin, holds up a photo of one alleged victim.

"And how did you kill him?" the interrogator demands. "By shooting," the 22-year-old Muhsin says.

But because some of the suspects bear visible cuts and bruises on their faces, and confessing terrorists often also admit to drunkenness or sexual deviancy on the show, critics question the legitimacy of both the interrogation techniques and the confessions. The Iraqi Ministry of Human Rights has filed complaints with the Interior Ministry and has asked the judicial council to review the show's legality.

"We think all detainees must go to court before any interview on TV," human rights official Saad Sultan says.

Wolf Brigade members, however, say that any official legal proceedings can come later. And rank and file Iraqi police interviewed make no apology - either for exposing suspected terrorists on television or for beating them up beforehand.

"Human rights advocates should think more about the rights of the Iraqis killed by car bombs," says Yasser Qurayshi, a civilian aide to Commander Waleed. "The Wolf Brigade fights terrorism, without regard to specifics about religion."

On a recent evening in the south Baghdad's heavily Shiite Muwassalat district, neighbors gathered at a house with a private generator to keep the power on.

Momentarily turning from the show, resident Dhiya Kimit says the on-air interrogations are "only a minor rights violation" by the brutal standards of Iraq's recent history. "In Saddam's time, if someone was a criminal, then three or four of his family members would be punished," he says. "In this case, only the criminal suffers."

A Sunni Arab viewer, who requested anonymity, says that "terrorism is a new experience for Iraq." He watches the show regularly with his wife and daughter. "Suicide bombings and kidnappings have only been happening here in the last year or two. So people want to know why?"

He says the show compares favorably to the more contrived programming of Saddam's time. "This show is an example of government accountability," he says. "This is democratic."

[Moses]

Militia leader seeks security role
by Bill Ickes in Baghdad
08jun05

A SENIOR Iraqi Shiite leader is demanding a greater security role for his party's armed wing, despite charges it has been hunting down Sunni Arabs whose community is at the forefront of the insurgency.

"In gratitude to the efforts, sacrifices and heroic positions of our brothers and brave sons from the Badr Organisation ... we must give them priority in bearing administrative and government responsibilities especially in the security field," Abdul Aziz al-Hakim told a conference in Baghdad.

Hakim leads the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), a key member of the Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafaari.

The Badr Organisation replaced the Badr Brigade, which was formed by former SCIRI boss Mohammed Baqer al-Hakim, Hakim's brother, in the 1980s to fight the former regime of Saddam Hussein.

But after the mid-May murder of 14 Sunnis, spokesman Hareth al-Dhari of the Committee of Muslim Scholars, Iraq's main Sunni religious authority, said: "It is the Badr Organisation which is responsible for these killings. I take responsibility for what I am saying."




US and Iraqi officials agree Sunnis must be drawn into the political mainstream after the widely boycotted January's elections in order to end the unyielding insurgency thatkilled almost 700 Iraqis in May.

Meanwhile, around 150 Sunni leaders have met to discuss their role in drawing up Iraq's new constitution after the disempowered minority was invited to join the process by ruling Shiites.

Adnan Dulaimi, leader of the Sunni waqf (religious endowment), said the main task of the closed-door gathering was to draft a list of Sunni names to join the parliamentary commission tasked with drawing up the constitution by August 15.

Pursuing another element in the Government's strategy, a joint Iraqi-US force pressed its offensive against insurgents in the northern town of Tal Afar.

The US military said in a statement late yesterday that troops had found and destroyed nine weapons caches and detained 73 suspects since the start of the operation on May 26.

Predominantly Turkmen Tal Afar, 100km from the Syrian border, is suspected of offering sanctuary to foreign Sunni Arab fighters who have infiltrated Iraq to carry out attacks in the area around Mosul.

Since November, Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, has become a new front for the fight against insurgents, with US and Iraqi authorities trumpeting arrests of senior aides to Iraq's most wanted man Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the alleged head of al-Qaeda's terror network in the country.

The US military said the Tal Afar offensive was just one of 30 operations involving US and Iraqi troops or just Iraqi forces.

Although the Iraqi Government touted the success of its Operation Lightning in Baghdad, rebels continued to strike north of the capital, in what has become a pattern of moving attacks from one area of the country to another whenever the insurgents come under pressure.

Two Iraqis were killed today when a car bomb exploded at a petrol station near Baquba, a police source said.

Witnesses said the blast occurred as a US army patrol passed by.

Meanwhile, three US soldiers were killed in two separate attacks north of Baghdad, the military said.

The US casualties capped a day that saw at least 33 Iraqis killed, making it the most deadly since May.

In Washington, US President George W. Bush has reiterated that US troops will stay in Iraq until Baghdad's forces are in control of the country.

"We'll support Iraqis as they take the lead in providing their own security," Mr Bush said., "Our strategy is clear: we're training Iraqi forces so they can take the fight to the enemy, so they can defend their country, and then our troops will come home."

He spoke at a press conference with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who acknowledged the going was tough in Iraq.

"The reason it's tough is because people know what's at stake. And what's at stake is the ability of Iraq, finally, to function properly as a democracy run for the good of its people," Mr Blair said.

Iraqi Government spokesman Leith Kubba meanwhile said Operation Lightning, now expanded south of the capital to Iraq's so-called triangle of death, had netted 887 detainees since May 22.

"Fighting these criminal networks ... and eradicating them will not happen with a knockout blow, but rather it will be a slow death and it will happen with continuous efforts to isolate them." Mr Kubba said.

[Moses]

CIVIL WAR IS U.S. STRATEGY, NOT INSURGENTS':

"Rand study suggests exploiting Sunni, Shiite and Arab, non-Arab divides to promote the U.S. policy objectives in the Muslim world

"By Abdus Sattar Ghazali

"A new [2004] Rand Corporation study suggests that Sunni, Shiite and Arab,
non-Arab divides should be exploited to promote the US policy objectives in the Muslim world.

"The recently released Rand study -- titled 'U.S. Strategy in the Muslim World After 9/11Åå -- was conducted on behalf of the U.S. Air Force. One of the primary objective of the study was to 'identify the key cleavages and fault lines among sectarian, ethnic, regional, and national lines and to assess how these cleavages generate challenges and opportunities for the United States.'

"'The majority of the world’s Muslims are Sunni, but a significant minority, about 15 percent of the global Muslim population, are Shi’ites... The expectations of Iraqi Shi’ites for a greater say in the governance of their country presents an opportunity for the United States to align its policy with Shi’ite aspirations for greater freedom of religious and political expression, in Iraq and elsewhere,' the study said.

"The study pointed out that with the moves toward rapprochement between Tehran and Riyadh, there are reports that Saudi Arabia’s Shi’ites are now turning from Iran and placing their hopes on the United States."

www.amperspective.com

[Moses]

June 9, 2005

Leaders of Iraq Back Militias, Widening Rift With Sunnis
By EDWARD WONG

BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 8 - The rift between the Iraqi government and hostile Sunni Arabs widened further on Wednesday as the country's leaders came out in support of ethnic and sectarian militias that Sunnis fear could be used against them.

Top Sunni Arab leaders also demanded that a 55-member committee that is to begin writing a new constitution add at least 25 Sunni seats with full voting powers. There was no immediate response from the Shiite-led committee, but in recent days its members have proposed adding 12 to 15 nonvoting seats for Sunni Arabs.

The announcement regarding militias was the first time the new government had publicly backed armed ethnic and sectarian groups, and it was an implicit rebuke to American officials, who have repeatedly asked that the government disband all militias in the country. The largest militias are the Kurdish pesh merga and an Iranian-trained Shiite militia that Sunni leaders have blamed for attacks against them.

The remarks were made at a morning news conference that was attended by Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a Shiite Arab; President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd and a militia leader himself; and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the Shiite political party that created the Iranian-trained militia, known as the Badr Organization. The briefing was held in Mr. Hakim's headquarters to mark his militia's second anniversary in the new Iraq and to rebut recent criticisms of the Badr from Sunni leaders.

The joint appearance of Mr. Talabani and the Shiite leaders seemed to indicate that Shiite and Kurdish leaders had reached an understanding that their respective militias should continue to exist.

Iraqi officials say the militias will be placed under the nominal control of the Defense and Interior Ministries. Kurdish leaders have consistently made clear, however, that the pesh merga will actually remain under the command of the Kurdistan regional government and, for all practical purposes, will be independent of the central government.

In Washington, Sean McCormack, a State Department spokesman, said Wednesday that American officials no longer played a role in determining the policy on militias.

"I have to emphasize this is an Iraqi issue that they will decide and that they will deal with," he told reporters. "But we will continue to work closely with them in the training of Iraqi forces."

Amid the political maneuvering, the Sunni-led insurgency ground on, with the American military announcing that four soldiers had been killed in various attacks in northern Iraq on Tuesday and Wednesday. There were also sketchy and unconfirmed reports of the kidnapping of 22 Shiite soldiers in the rebellious western desert region of the country.

A car bomb exploded in a line of drivers outside a gas station in the city of Baquba, killing three people and wounding one, an Interior Ministry official said. Two bodyguards of a National Assembly member were shot dead in Baghdad, while a police officer was killed in the capital, and another was assassinated in Mosul, the official said.

The Badr Organization has recently become a target of some Sunni Arab leaders, who have blamed it for the killings of prominent Sunni clerics and others. Among the group's harshest critics is Harith al-Dhari, leader of the Muslim Scholars Association, a powerful group of Sunni clerics that says it represents 3,000 mosques.

Indeed, from the time the Badr militia entered Iraq from Iran during the American-led invasion, Sunnis have blamed its fighters for assassinations across the country, especially the killings of former Baath Party officials.

The two main Kurdish parties together have the strongest militia in the country, a force of 100,000 fighters known as the pesh merga, or "those who face death." In negotiations with the Shiites to assemble the current government, Kurdish leaders argued vehemently that the Kurds, as part of their right to broad autonomy, must be allowed to keep the pesh merga intact.

"You and the pesh merga are wanted and are important to fulfilling this sacred task, to establishing a democratic, federal and independent Iraq," Mr. Talabani said at the news conference, speaking of the Badr Organization, which numbers in the tens of thousands.

The Badr Organization has its own guarantee that it will remain intact, since the new interior minister, Bayan Jabr, is a former Badr officer.

The Badr Organization, originally called the Badr Brigade, was founded in the 1980's in Iran, where its leaders were living in exile, and it received training from the Iranian military. Mr. Hakim was appointed its leader by his older brother, Muhammad Bakr al-Hakim. When the elder Mr. Hakim was killed in a suicide car bombing in Najaf in August 2003, his brother took charge of the political party that gave birth to the Badr.

In the summer of 2003, the Badr Brigade changed its name at a time when American officials with the Coalition Provisional Authority were urging the dissolution of all militia. Its leaders claimed publicly that it had been transformed into a purely political and civil organization. But they said repeatedly in interviews that it was still armed and was active in cities across Iraq, particularly in the Shiite heartland of the south.

One of the most intractable problems for the new government is how to lessen the deep-seated feelings of disenfranchisement among the formerly ruling Sunni Arabs. The Sunnis largely boycotted the January elections and are mostly shut out of the political process. Shiite and Kurdish leaders, at the urging of the White House, are trying to bring in more Sunnis, especially into the process of writing the permanent constitution, whose first draft is due by Aug. 15.

Sunni Arab leaders asserted Wednesday that they wanted at least 25 additional seats on the committee of the National Assembly assigned to draft the constitution. There are now two Sunni Arabs on the Shiite-dominated committee.

The committee is likely to resist the demands of the Sunnis, since it now counts only 15 Kurds in its ranks. Kurds, like the Sunni Arabs, make up roughly a fifth of the Iraqi population.

Alaa Meki, an official in the Iraqi Islamic Party, a powerful Sunni group, said in an interview that the Sunni leaders were ready to submit 25 names to the committee to be accepted as "full members, not as advisers."

The International Crisis Group, a prominent conflict-resolution organization, released a study Wednesday saying the National Assembly should immediately invoke the option of a six-month delay on the draft deadline of the constitution partly to make the process more inclusive. The assembly should then lay out a detailed timetable for completing the first draft, the study said.

Joost R. Hiltermann, the report's author, said in an e-mail message that the haggling over Sunni positions on the committee "could go on for a while" and is "all the more reason to postpone, but only with a detailed timetable."

[Moses]

UK/US aid funds Iraqi torture units

Peter Beaumont in Baghdad and Martin Bright
Sunday July 3, 2005

Observer
British and American aid intended for Iraq's hard-pressed police service is being diverted to paramilitary commando units accused of widespread human rights abuses, including torture and extra-judicial killings, The Observer can reveal.

Iraqi Police Service officers said that ammunition, weapons and vehicles earmarked for the IPS are being taken by shock troops at the forefront of Iraq's new dirty counter-insurgency war.

The allegations follow a wide-ranging investigation by this paper into serious human rights abuses being conducted by anti-insurgency forces in Iraq. The Observer has seen photographic evidence of post-mortem and hospital examinations of alleged terror suspects from Baghdad and the Sunni Triangle which demonstrate serious abuse of suspects including burnings, strangulation, the breaking of limbs and - in one case - the apparent use of an electric drill to perform a knee-capping.

The investigation revealed:

· A 'ghost' network of secret detention centres across the country, inaccessible to human rights organisations, where torture is taking place.

· Compelling evidence of widespread use of violent interrogation methods including hanging by the arms, burnings, beatings, the use of electric shocks and sexual abuse.

· Claims that serious abuse has taken place within the walls of the Iraqi government's own Ministry of the Interior.

· Apparent co-operation between unofficial and official detention facilities, and evidence of extra-judicial executions by the police.

The issue of increasing human rights abuses has been raised with the new Iraqi government by the Foreign Office, the US State Department and the United Nations. British Embassy officials in Baghdad have been briefed on the crisis by concerned senior Iraqi officials on several occasions.

The Ministry of Defence confirmed that it has spent £27 million in gift aid on the Iraqi security services, which provided guns, ammunition, and public order equipment such as protective vests and armoured Land Rovers. An MoD source said the majority of this material went to the police. A further £20m went to the police from the government's Global Conflict Prevention Pool, jointly funded by the MoD, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Department for International Development.

Despite that, the British government has, until now, remained silent in public on the issue of the country's widening human rights crisis.

Liberal Democrat defence spokesman Michael Moore called on ministers to make an immediate statement in the House of Commons: 'These are serious reports that go to the heart of the question of[v] the coalition's oversight of the security situation in Iraq. The Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence must urgently inform Parliament about the scope of their investigation into these allegations,' [/b]he said.

The Foreign Office said last night that it was taking the reports of abuse 'very seriously'. [gosh, why does that response sound so familiar?] It issued detailed responses to the claims: 'We are aware and deeply concerned by reports of detainee abuse by Iraqi police officers and of men in police uniforms committing serious crimes, whether these men are genuine policemen or not. Any abuse of detainees is unacceptable.'

An MoD spokesman told The Observer: 'We are aware of the allegations. We have raised this with the Iraqi government at the highest levels in Baghdad and Basra.'

Privately, there is a growing belief that complaints are being stonewalled.

The investigation raises questions about the British government's commitment to denying aid to governments that tolerate or encourage human rights abuses.

International and Iraqi officials claim the use of torture has become more extensive since the country's first democratically-elected government was sworn in.

Steve Crawshaw of Human Rights Watch,said: 'There has been the attempt to suggest that because Saddam's regime is over now everything is rosy in Iraq. What is happening in official places in Iraq is simply horrific and must be stopped.'

The Foreign Office stressed: 'Any abuse of detainees is unacceptable. As soon as we become aware of any allegations of abuse we raise them at the highest levels in Basra and Baghdad.

'We would expect them to publish the findings of any investigations, prosecute those found to have carried out any abuse, punish those found guilty regardless of rank or background, and take all steps to prevent any recurrence.'[yeah, right. That'll do the trick]

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Guardian Unlimited ¿ Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005