[casi] News, 26/03-02/04/03 (3)

[Peter Brooke <pbrooke@DELETETHISukonline.co.uk>]

News, 26/03-02/04/03 (3)

THE PARTISAN WAR

*  Small bands of Iraqi fighters battle Marines on way to Baghdad
*  'Regret' over Blair execution comment
*  Washington underestimates history
*  Missile lands near Kuwait City mall, two hurt
*  200 Saddam loyalists die in bombing
*  War turns to terror
*  Defecting Iraqi troops executed, say dissidents
*  Iraqi deserter tells of desperation
*  UN warns of health, environment risks from Iraqi oil fires
*  "Bravo," the war song on top of the Iraqi charts
*  Captured Iraqi militia fighters may be sent to Guantanamo Bay
*  Arab volunteers leave Lebanon to fight for "God and Iraq"
*  Crack US troops unnerved by Iraqis firing from ambulance, garbage truck


THE PARTISAN WAR

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0327war-marines-ON.html

*  SMALL BANDS OF IRAQI FIGHTERS BATTLE MARINES ON WAY TO BAGHDAD
Arizona Republic, from New York Times News Service, 27th March

WITH THE FIRST MARINE DIVISION, Iraq - Marine and other allied units
pressing toward Baghdad are encountering nearly constant harassment and
ambush by small bands of irregular Iraqi fighters and remnants of army units
they bypassed, and officers fear the resistance will only stiffen as they
get closer to the capital.

"We've been contested every inch, every mile on the way up," Col. Ben
Saylor, the division's chief of staff, said on Thursday.

Even as he spoke, a separate Marine unit, Task Force Tarawa, was engaged in
the fifth day of a pitched battle in the city of An Nasiriyah, more than 100
miles south of the 1st Marine Division's forward units.

Hours later, Iraqi fighters spilled out of the town of Al Samawah, a little
north of An Nasiriyah, and fought U.S. Army troops in an effort to cut
supply lines along the main road known as Highway 8.

Asked if the fighting would be more intense as the allied forces neared the
Iraqi Republican Guard divisions south of Baghdad, the colonel replied,
"Yeah, I think it's going to be."

The attacks appear to call into question the American strategy of sweeping
past Iraqi army positions and towns in order to reach Baghdad swiftly and,
as officers here put it, "cut off the head" of the government. They also
call into question the Americans' confident belief that they would be
welcomed as liberators.

Instead, the Americans could find their supply lines -convoys of thousands
of trucks hauling food, fuel, water and ammunition - subject to attack.
Delay could strengthen efforts by President Saddam Hussein to turn any siege
of Baghdad to his political advantage, portraying it as a crisis posing a
threat of numerous civilian casualties.

The planned assault on Baghdad is now about three days behind schedule,
officers here say, but the delays were caused less by the ambushes than by
the sandstorm that swept in for several days this week, disrupting convoys
moving the division, blinding night vision goggles and fouling equipment
from pistols to helicopters to computers.

The critical thing, senior Marine officers say, is to maintain the sequence
in which U.S. Army troops under the V Corps move forward simultaneously on
the west, and British forces advance on the east, protecting each other's
flanks.

Saylor and other intelligence and operations officers here at division
headquarters characterized the attackers mainly as members of militias
associated with Saddam and his sons, the fedayeen and the al-Quds Brigade
along with hard-core Baath Party supporters.

The officers believe that the attackers may be getting rudimentary military
direction from Republican Guard officers.

Their weapons are the light equipment common to guerrillas and armies
throughout the Third World: shoulder-fired rocket-propelled grenades,
Soviet-era AK-47 assault rifles and a some small mortars.

But while the Marines say they have cut down most of the attackers with
overwhelming firepower, they have been impressed in many cases with their
tenacity.

"They're showing a lot of guts," said Capt. Dave Nettles, an intelligence
officer with the 7th Regimental Combat Team. That Marine unit's light
armored reconnaissance patrols have fought several scraps with the
guerrillas. "Maybe they don't have anything to lose."

In a similar vein, Saylor added, "They come, they keep coming. They get up
and they come." Saylor and other officers said that they had discovered arms
caches along the route and that some of the guerrillas were traveling in
Toyota pickup trucks. Most seemed to be operating in civilian clothes. The
colonel added that in some towns, "It's the Baath Party headquarters, that's
where they pour out of."

Lt. Col. Clarke Lethin, an operations officer, said, "There are battalions
stationed throughout the country in order to intimidate. The Baath Party and
those people are still in charge."

Indeed, one reason why the resistance is springing up in the south, behind
the advancing American lines, might well be that large units of Baath Party
loyalists might have been based there as enforcers, to keep the restive
Shiite Muslim majority in line.

The Americans had expected the Shiite population to rise up against Saddam's
government, but this does not appear to have happened. Another factor may be
the long tradition of nationalist and anti-colonialist sentiment here dating
back at least to the British mandate after World War I.

In addition to the machine guns, rockets and grenade launchers, the Marines
are able to call in strikes by Cobra helicopter gunships against the
attackers.

"We come back with decisive force and take them down immediately," Saylor
said.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2896415.stm

*  'REGRET' OVER BLAIR EXECUTION COMMENT
BBC, 28th March

A government minister has expressed regret over any hurt caused by Tony
Blair's claim that two British soldiers were executed.

The prime minister's comments were apparently at odds with what the British
Army had told relatives of Sapper Luke Allsopp, 24, and Staff Sergeant Simon
Cullingworth, 36, both from a bomb disposal unit of the Royal Engineers.

Sapper Allsopp's family had reportedly expressed anger after Mr Blair used
the two deaths as an example of the brutality of Saddam Hussein's regime.

Armed Forces Minister Adam Ingram took the opportunity of a news briefing
for journalists in London to express his "regret" for any distress caused.

He said: "Given the information available to us, it did indicate that those
two soldiers may have been executed.

"So if there's hurt from the language used then we regret that, clearly,
that was never the intention.

"But it was to point up ... our knowledge about the depravity, the brutality
of that regime."

Mr Blair made his execution claim, which is denied by Iraq, at a news
conference with President George W Bush at Camp David near Washington.

In particular he expressed outrage that pictures of the bodies were paraded
on an Arab news channel.

"It is yet one more flagrant breach of all the proper conventions of war.

"More than that, to the families of the soldiers involved, it is an act of
cruelty beyond comprehension.

"Indeed, it is beyond the comprehension of anyone with an ounce of humanity
in their souls."

Al-Jazeera television has screened pictures of the two soldiers who went
missing in an Iraqi ambush on Sunday.

Asked why he had referred to their deaths as executions, Mr Blair said it
was "because of the circumstances we know".

Speaking later, the prime minister's official spokesman acknowledged there
was not absolute proof they were executed but claimed that "every piece of
information points towards the men having been executed in a brutal
fashion".

He said the bodies had been found some distance from their vehicles and
their protective equipment and helmets were missing.

According to the Daily Mirror newspaper Sapper Allsopp's sister Nina said:
"His Colonel told us he was not executed we just can't understand why people
are lying."

Iraqi Information Minister Mohammad Saeed al-Sahaf told Abu Dhabi television
that Mr Blair had "lied to the public" about the soldiers, adding: "We
haven't executed anyone."


http://www.dailystar.com.lb/opinion/29_03_03_b.asp

*  WASHINGTON UNDERESTIMATES HISTORY
by Rosemary Hollis
Lebanon Daily Star, 29th March

Those neo-conservative ideologues in Washington who held a celebratory
breakfast only two days after the start of hostilities on Iraq should be
feeling more sombre by now. They are the ones advocating remaking the region
on the basis of a highly selective, a-historical appraisal of realities in
Iraq and surrounding countries.

On day one of the war, having failed in an assassination attempt on the
Iraqi president, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was nonetheless
confidently predicting that US "shock and awe" tactics would startle the
Iraqis into submission. Confusion surrounds what is actually meant by this
demonstration of hi-tech prowess on the battlefield to change the
psychological disposition of the enemy. Even the architects of "shock and
awe" say it has been misunderstood.

Not only are the Iraqis putting up much more of a fight on multiple fronts
than was apparently anticipated, but they have the upper hand in the
propaganda stakes, at least in the region. The absence of mass troop
surrenders and popular revolts against the Baathist authorities in cities in
the south of Iraq has obliged British and American politicians to
acknowledge that their failure to support Iraqi rebels in 1991 may have
something to do with their mistrust today.

This is the first sign of recognition that US and UK policies on Iraq to
date may have contributed to the plight of ordinary Iraqis. In the 1980s,
the Russians, Americans, French and British combined helped to arm and
bolster the regime of Saddam Hussein, when he took on revolutionary Iran in
eight miserable years of war. The imposition of sanctions following his
invasion of Kuwait has been a policy failure as well.

In fact, the US and UK would do well to look even further back, to the
formation of the contemporary state of Iraq in the 1920s, under British
tutelage. By promoting the fortunes of the Sunni Arabminority at the expense
of the Shiite majority and ethnic Kurds, Iraq's colonial masters invited the
emergence of a militant nationalism predicated on anti imperialism and
championship of broader Arab causes against Israel, Iran and latterly
America.

Turning all Iraqis into entrepreneurial democrats, beholden to their Western
"liberators" and at peace with the rest of the region, is the dream of the
US neo-conservatives. They discount both the nature of the Iraqi state and
the nationalist backlash that any occupier is likely to encounter. As
explained in the RIIA Briefing Paper on Iraq: the Regional Fallout, the
patronage system that exists beneath the surface in Iraq is likely to
reassert itself post conflict, whether the Americans stay around long enough
to try to remake the state or not.

Meanwhile, Iraq is not a hermetically sealed box. What happens there is
already reverberating across the region. The economies of Syria and Jordan
have come to depend on flows of Iraqi oil at below market rates, whether
smuggled or under UN sanction. The fortunes of Gulf oil producers will be
undercut by the revitalization of the Iraqi energy sector. Turkey will
intervene if the Kurds in northern Iraq turn their de facto autonomy into a
more permanent arrangement that could inspire the Kurds elsewhere.

As it is, the Iraqi resistance to the arrival of US and British troops on
their soil will no doubt go down in Arab history as an antidote to the
notion of Arab powerlessness in the face of external intervention. The way
the conflict is shaping up, there will be much more bloodshed on the way to
toppling the regime and rooting out all those who remain loyal to it. In the
process the danger of a general sense of alienation toward the invaders will
grow.

The fate of US forces in Lebanon in the early 1980s could be the model for
what transpires. As they take casualties, the US and British troops will
have to show enormous forbearance to retain their self-appointed role as
liberators, and build trust among the general populace. Indeed, without that
trust and the cooperation of ordinary Iraqis against regime supporters, they
cannot realistically hope to succeed in remaking the country for the benefit
of its citizens.

US plans for Iraqi reconstruction, which posit an interim administration of
US appointed officials backed by the US military, a secondary humanitarian
role for the UN, and contracts for US firms may seem the most logical and
efficient way forward in Washington. However, such thinking betrays a
willful disregard for the lessons of imperial history which the United
States itself should know as well as any.

While the Washington ideologues will have succeeded in shaking up a region
beset with ills, they will not be able to control the fallout. The survival
of Arab governments apparently powerless to do much for either the Iraqis or
the Palestinians may indeed be in question. But if they fall, the
beneficiaries will not be the Americans. Instead the heroes will be the
Lebanese, the Palestinians and the Iraqis who have shown defiance. And sadly
even the forces of Al-Qaeda may receive a boost.

Rosemary Hollis heads the Middle East Program at the Royal Institute of
International Affairs in London. She is a contributor to the institute's
briefing paper: Iraq: the Regional Fallout, and wrote this column for The
Daily Star


http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3301194&thesection=news&t
hesubsection=world

*  MISSILE LANDS NEAR KUWAIT CITY MALL, TWO HURT
New Zealand Herald, from Reuters, 29th March

An Iraqi missile evaded Kuwaiti defence systems and came down near a
seafront shopping mall in Kuwait City today, injuring two people, Kuwaiti
officials said.

It was the first time since the US-led invasion of neighbouring Iraq a week
ago that a missile had landed so close to Kuwait City. Most missiles have
been intercepted by Patriot batteries but this rocket appeared to skim in
below the radar.

Debris was strewn around the mall, including what appeared to be the tailfin
of a missile, and a smell of smoke hung in the night air in the early hours.
There was damage to the front and roof of a cinema building in the mall
complex.

The official Kuwait News Agency said two people had been injured -- a
Kuwaiti man whose leg was broken and an Egyptian who suffered a broken
shoulder.

Officials said the missile was probably a Chinese-built Silkworm
ship-to-ship missile that had been fired from the vicinity of the Faw
peninsula in Iraq. They said it had skimmed low over the sea and so had
evaded detection by radar.

"We are prepared for this kind of terrorism from the Iraqi regime and
everyone residing in this country is prepared for these circumstances,"
Information Minister Sheikh Ahmad al Fahd al-Sabah told Kuwaiti state
television.

A team of Czech military chemicals weapons experts wearing full protective
suits and gas masks arrived at the scene after the blast, but Kuwaiti
officials later said the missile had no chemical or biological payload.

A policeman at the scene told Reuters he had seen a missile land in the sea.
Other witnesses said the missile appeared to fly in over the sea from the
direction of the Faw peninsula.

Mohammed al-Misfir, a Kuwaiti man who was in the area at the time of the
blast, said: "We were very lucky. Normally at this time the cinema is open.
But because of the war, it has been closed so no-one was hurt."

Naval patrol boats chugged slowly up and down the sea beside the mall,
apparently looking for fragments of the missile.

Several rockets have been launched at Kuwait from Iraq since the U.S.-led
war against Iraq began. Kuwaiti officials say previous missiles launched at
Kuwait have all been shot down by Patriot batteries or landed harmlessly in
unpopulated areas.

Kuwait was the launchpad of the US and British ground war against Iraq,
which began on March 20. US troops have been based in Kuwait since they
drove Iraqi forces out of the country in the 1991 Gulf War after a
seven-month occupation.


http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=372912003

*  200 SADDAM LOYALISTS DIE IN BOMBING
by Duncan Roberts
The Scotsman, 29th March

AROUND 200 of Saddam Hussein's most loyal paramilitary fighters have been
killed after the building in Basra they were meeting in was destroyed by US
laser-guided missiles.

The US warplanes, two F-15E Strike Eagles, involved in the attack on
Fedayeen paramilitaries in Iraq's second city, used laser-guided munitions
fitted with delayed fuses.

This meant the bombs penetrated into the building before detonation,
minimising the external effects of the blast, which US Central Command said
was just 300 yards from a church.

A spokesman for US Central Command said today that "no-one came out" of the
shattered two-storey structure. The Fedayeen has so far made it difficult
for British and US forces surrounding Basra to move in with much-needed
humanitarian aid for its 1.3 million-strong population.

The intelligence-led operation suggests US efforts to destroy the Iraqi
government's leadership are far more extensive than previously known.

Covert US teams from the CIA's paramilitary division and the military's
special operations group, have been operating in urban areas in Iraq
identifying key targets for warplanes and missile strikes.

They include snipers and demolition experts schooled in setting house and
car bombs and have reportedly killed more than a handful of individuals,
according to one knowledgeable source.

They have been in operation for at least one week.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon's top general has said that coalition forces control
more than a third of Iraq's territory and 95% of its sky.

American troops continued moving into position yesterday for an expected
ferocious battle against the Republican Guard divisions covering the
approaches to Baghdad. General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, said Iraqis believed to be Republican Guards were hiding tanks and
other military equipment in a residential neighbourhood south of the Iraqi
capital.

To underscore the message that the war was going well, Myers showed a map of
Iraq detailing about 40% of the country that he said was no longer under
Saddam's control. The areas included Kurdish zones in the north which have
been autonomous since the early 1990s, a large swath of Iraq's western
desert where special operations forces have been hunting for missiles, and a
triple-peaked area of southern Iraq where the Army and Marines are pushing
toward Iraq's capital.

"While there will continue to be sporadic, even serious engagements in those
areas, the regime does not control them," Myers said. The exception to US
air supremacy are Baghdad and Saddam's hometown of Tikrit, where
surface-to-air missile sites and other air defences have not been completely
destroyed .

Coalition forces have fired 650 Tomahawk cruise missiles and dropped more
than 5000 precision-guided bombs on Iraq since the war started, Myers said.

British and US planes flew more than 1500 missions over Iraq yesterday,
including 700 strike sorties, a military official said. The vast majority of
those were bombing and strafing in support of coalition ground forces, the
official said.

In Nasiriyah, artillery and rocket barrages set buildings on fire and raised
a pall of thick, black smoke as Marines outside the city tried to stamp out
Iraqi resistance on a key supply route to Baghdad.

Heavy smoke from a burning power plant poured over the city of 500,000, and
other buildings were also on fire. In Nasiriyah's eastern neighbourhoods,
some buildings were reduced to shells, with debris scattered in the streets.

US forces were trying to clear the strategic road around Nasiriyah, which
lies at a junction of highways leading up to Baghdad and has been the scene
of fierce fighting the past week.

Meanwhile, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has claimed Saddam Hussein's
"sadistic" death squads are beheading disloyal subjects to strike fear into
those who contemplate surrender.

Donning Allied military uniforms, the executioners are weeding out soldiers
and innocent civilians who dare to stand up to Saddam's reign of terror and
are using them as an example to others considering desertion, he said.

Mr Rumsfeld told a Pentagon news briefing: "These death squads report to the
Hussein family directly. Their ranks are populated with criminals released
from Iraqi prisons. They dress in civilian clothes and operate from private
homes confiscated from innocent people and try to blend in with the civilian
population.

"They conduct sadistic executions on sidewalks and public squares, cutting
the tongues out of those accused of disloyalty and beheading people with
swords."

The Fedayeen were not making martyrs of themselves, he added, but were
making martyrs of those innocent Iraqis opposed to Saddam's rule. "We will
take them at their word and if their wish is to die for Saddam Hussein they
will be accommodated.

"As the regime deploys squads to slaughter its own citizens, coalition
forces are trying to save Iraqi lives. We do this because, unlike Saddam
Hussein's regime, our nations and our people value human life."

He urged the Iraqi people to try to remember the faces and the names of the
death squad officers.

"The time will come when we will need your help and your testimony," he
said. A British military source said: "Some of the things we are seeing are
akin to some of the worst things that happened in places like Rwanda."

CIA officials declined to comment on the intelligence operation. Pentagon
spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said: "As we have said before, we have Special
Forces in the north, west and south of the country."

As conventional US and British forces have encountered fiercer than expected
Iraqi resistance, the CIA and the Pentagon's covert units are under
increasing pressure to fire the "silver bullet" that will kill Hussein and
bring down his government, thereby bringing the ground war to a quick
conclusion.

The agencies have stepped up a fierce psychological operations campaign to
rattle key members of Hussein's government in an effort to get them to turn
on the Iraqi leader. CIA units and special operations teams are also
involved in organising tribal groups to fight the Iraqi government from the
north. They are secretly hunting for weapons of mass destruction and
missiles sites, and are looking to interrogate Iraqi defectors and prisoners
of war.

The CIA, the National Security Agency and foreign intelligence services
co-operating with the agency are helping to identify "leadership" targets;
the homes, offices and other sites inhabited by the officials who make up
the government's infrastructure.

One source has suggested that at least some of the explosions seen and heard
in Baghdad were not the result of aerial bombs and missiles but rather
caused by bombs planted by the covert teams. A 22-year-old US policy bars
political killings but it's been reported that since September 11, the Bush
administration has concluded that it does not prevent the president from
lawfully singling out a terrorist for death by covert means.

The battle over Nasiriyah, meanwhile, gave a sample of the kind of firefight
that may await coalition forces in Baghdad, 200 miles to the north. Marines
set up makeshift camps on the side of a road, waiting for badly needed fuel
supplies and working to improve communications with units further back.
Helicopter gunships tried to wear down Saddam Hussein's best fighters
protecting the approaches to the capital.

In the 101st Airborne Division's first known offensive mission of the war,
its Apaches hit tanks and installations of the Republican Guard.

Four Marines with the 1st Expeditionary Force have been reported missing
near Nasiriyah .

Saddam's Fedayeen were spotted in and around the city. Some of the Iraqis
wore uniforms and others were in civilian clothes, riding in white pick-up
trucks and taxis.

They waved white T-shirts and then started shooting.


http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/a/2003/03/30/MN283565
.DTL

*  WAR TURNS TO TERROR
by Chuck Squatriglia
San Francisco Chronicle, 30th March

A suicide bomber killed four U.S. soldiers at an Army checkpoint in central
Iraq on Saturday, opening a potentially devastating new front in the war as
Baghdad promised further attacks and threatened to bring terrorism to
America.

The suicide bombing, which U.S. officials characterized as an act of
terrorism, came as allied forces pounded the Iraqi capital with relentless
aerial attacks, heavily damaging Saddam Hussein's Information Ministry and
forcing it to relocate in a nearby hotel.

U.S. Army attack helicopters also hammered Hussein's elite Medina Division
of the Republican Guard near Karbala, and allied warplanes struck a meeting
of 200 Hussein loyalists and members of the ruling Baath Party near Basra.

But those successes were offset by the late morning suicide bombing near
Najaf, a city of 100,000 people about 100 miles southwest of Baghdad. The
attack was the first of its kind since the war began 11 days ago -- and Iraq
said there would be more.

"This is just the beginning," Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin told
reporters in Baghdad. "We will use any means to kill our enemy in our land,
and we will follow the enemy into its land."

An officer with the 3rd Infantry Division's 1st Brigade told reporters that
the suicide bomber was driving a taxi and motioned to the soldiers for help
before detonating the explosives.

Hussein posthumously awarded two medals to the bomber, Iraqi state
television reported.

At Central Command headquarters, Maj. Gen. Victor Renuart denounced the
attack as "a symbol of an organization that's getting desperate" and said it
would not alter battle plans to overthrow the Iraqi regime.

The guerrilla-style bombing further complicates those plans. Such tactics
could become increasingly common -- and dangerous -- should coalition troops
be forced into door-to-door urban combat in Baghdad and elsewhere. It also
increases the risk that allied patrols, wary of ambushes, might fire on
unarmed civilians, hindering efforts to build worldwide support for the war.

"We're very concerned about it. It looks and feels like terrorism," Maj.
Gen. Stanley McChrystal, vice director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, said at the Pentagon. "It won't change our overall rules of
engagement but, to protect our soldiers, it clearly requires great care."


http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/03/30/1048962639067.html

*  DEFECTING IRAQI TROOPS EXECUTED, SAY DISSIDENTS
Sydney Morning Herald, from AFP, 30th March

Iraqi opposition groups claimed today that President Saddam Hussein's forces
had executed many Iraqi soldiers who tried to cross from government
territory to the Kurdish held north to join their ranks.

The claims, which could not be independently confirmed, came from an
official in the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), which controls part of the
autonomous Kurdish enclave, and the US-backed Iraqi National Congress (INC).

The INC, which has set up an "Iraq headquarters" in the enclave, alleged in
a statement sent to AFP in Dubai that "approximately 50 soldiers were shot
dead" early yesterday when they tried to cross from Kalar in Diyala province
into territory held by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the other
main faction in Iraqi Kurdistan.

A KDP official in Arbil, requesting anonymity, meanwhile charged that "many"
soldiers had been executed over the past couple of days for attempting to
defect to KDP-held areas, including 15 killed at dawn on Friday near the
village of Dobardan, 30km north of government-held Mosul.

According to the official in this KDP-held town, around 100 Iraqi officers
and soldiers crossed the demarcation line into KDP-controlled territory in
the past three days.

Part of the reason that government forces had effected some pullbacks from
frontlines with the Kurdish region since the US-led war began on March 20
was to prevent such defections, Kurdish military officials said.

Iraqi government forces have fallen back from their pre-war frontlines with
both the KDP and PUK after waves of US air strikes on their positions.

An AFP correspondent yesterday saw PUK fighters moving to Qarah Anjir, a
garrison town around 16 km east of the government-held oil-rich city of
Kirkuk, less than two days after Iraqi troops pulled back to within the city
limits.

Several small units of US special forces, who are working alongside the PUK,
were also sighted moving into the area abandoned by Iraqi forces.

The United States and Britain hope defections in the Iraqi army can speed up
their campaign to unseat Saddam.


http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2003/03/31/55083-ap.html

*  IRAQI DESERTER TELLS OF DESPERATION
by Brian Murphy
Canada News, 31st March

KALAK, Iraq (AP) -- The soldier covered his face and wept.

It was a deep, sudden sobbing he couldn't control. His shoulders heaved.
Tears wet the frayed cuffs of his green Iraqi army sweater.

He cried because he was alive. He cried because his family may think he's
dead. He cried for his country. He cried because -- for him -- the war was
over.

"I'm so sorry. Excuse me. I just can't stop," wept the soldier who fled
Saddam Hussein's army and was taken Monday into the hands of U.S.-allied
Iraqi Kurdish fighters. "Could this terrible time be over soon? Please, tell
me."

The soldier -- part of a front-line unit -- was among at least 18 Iraqi
deserters who staggered into the Kurdish town of Kalak as U.S. warplanes
stepped up airstrikes on Iraqi positions near the Kurds' autonomous region.
He agreed to share his story, but with conditions: no details about him or
his military service could be revealed. Call him Ali.

He feared Saddam loyalists could retaliate against his family. They may have
already, he said.

"The army knows I ran away. They could come and take revenge," he said in
the central police barracks in Kalak, about 20 miles northwest of the
Kurdish administrative center Irbil. "My only hope is that I'm not alone.
There are so many deserters and those who want to run. They cannot attack
all these families with a war going on."

War for this foot soldier was one of desperation. "We only prayed we'd stay
alive long enough to get a chance to escape," Ali said through an
interpreter.

His unit -- about 30 men -- slept in muddy burrows on a hillside, he said.
Breakfast was tea and crusty bread. At midday: rice and a single cucumber to
share between two soldiers. There was no dinner.

His commanders described the war as an American grab for Iraqi oil. He
couldn't contradict them -- there were no radios or chances to call home.
Occasionally they would receive copies of the Iraqi military newspaper. One
issue featured a poem with the lines: "The enemy will tire, and Saddam will
remain."

"We knew nothing. We were told only that America was trying to take over
Iraq," Ali said. "But we are not so stupid. We know how Saddam rules the
country. We know in our hearts we'd be better off without him."

Ali was drafted just after the 1991 Gulf War. He remained in the military
because his family depended on the small military pay. Anyway, there were
few choices for ex-soldiers whose formal education ended in the fourth
grade. There were no jobs at home. Ali claimed he would never seek the
favors of Saddam's ruling Baath party.

"I don't see Saddam as a hero anymore," Ali said.

U.S. bombs killed at least five members of his unit. About the same number
were wounded, he said. "There is no medical help," he added. "They are left
to die."

"The spirit of the soldiers is very low," he said. "We were not really mad
at the Americans. We just want to save our lives."

He and four other soldiers decided to run. But they had to pick their
moment. Their unit and most others include Baathist agents given orders to
execute any deserters, he said.

"But we decided it was either die from an American bomb or be killed by our
own people," he said. "It was better to run and take our chances."

On Wednesday evening, in a torrential rainstorm, they made their break. They
raced over the treeless pastures into Kurdish territory. The next morning,
they asked a goat herder to direct them to Kalak. Then they panicked.

"We thought he would hand us over to the Iraqi army for some reward," Ali
said.

They arrived at the edge of Kalak on Friday. They could see the Iraqi
positions on the ridge just across the Great Zab River, running high and
dirt brown after the downpours. And they waited.

They worried Kurdish militiamen would open fire if they simply walked into
town. Until dawn Monday, they survived on wild greens and weighed their
choices. They finally decided to fashion a surrender flag from an
undershirt.

A half hour later, they were gulping hot tea and smoking cigarettes. Kurdish
officials hunted for new clothes. Ali still wore what passed for a uniform:
green camouflage pants, boots, a military sweater, a wool turban and a
ragged nylon jacket dotted with cigarette burns.

Kurdish authorities decline to say precisely how many Iraqi military
deserters have crossed over. Modest estimates range from several hundred to
nearly 500. But they clearly expect more. Kurds plan a camp for at least
6,000 deserters and possible Iraqi POWs.

Massoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdish Democratic Party whose territory
includes Kalak, said "no comment" when asked if U.S. officials in the
Kurdish zone would question deserters.

"I can say now what I always felt: Saddam led to this war," Ali said. "We
don't want to fight America. We don't want to fight for Saddam. We just want
an end to all this."

A top Kurdish official, Hoshiar Zebari, predicted a collision course for two
powerful forces in Iraq: the ordinary troops and the defenders of the
regime.

"It's highly possible there could be confrontations between the regular army
and the paramilitary who are terrorizing the people," Zebari told reporters.

Ali agreed. No one dares to speak out against Saddam while Baath party
forces still have footholds, he said.

"The people know that any uprising against Saddam now would mean terrible
things to them and their family. They force them to chant 'Down with
America,' but not everyone means it. Saddam's people are afraid for the
future."

That's when he started to cry. Moments later came the thud of a U.S. bomb
hitting the ridge just across the river.


http://www.haveeru.com.mv/english/news_show.phtml?id=1251&search=&find=

*  UN WARNS OF HEALTH, ENVIRONMENT RISKS FROM IRAQI OIL FIRES

PARIS, March 31 (AFP) - The UN warned Monday of the cost to health and the
environment from the Iraqi war, saying blazing oilwells in southern Iraq and
oil-filled trenches around Baghdad were a danger to the frail and threatened
the country's fragile ecology.

"The black smoke that we see on television and in satellite pictures
contains dangerous chemicals that can cause immediate harm to human beings,
particularly children and people with respiratory problems and pollute the
region's natural ecosystems," UN Environment Programme (UNEP) Executive
Director Klaus Toepfer said.

"There is an urgent need to monitor air quality in the affected areas as
soon as possible," he said in a press statement.

Iraqi forces have filled trenches around Baghdad with crude oil and set fire
to them, apparently hoping to create haze and heat to deter US missiles.

Toepfer said he was relieved that the oil well fires in southern Iraq,
ignited by President Saddam Hussein's troops, were "much smaller" than in
the 1991 Gulf War but added "they too remain a potential concern for human
health and the environment."

Burning oil contains a cocktail of chemicals that are toxic or carcinogenic,
notably sulphur, mercury, dioxins and furans, he noted.

The statement, issued by UNEP at its headquarters in Nairobi, said the other
major evidence of environmental stress in Iraq was the increase in algae in
the Shatt Al Arab estuary and surrounding waters.

This may have been caused by raw sewage being dumped into the waterway from
Basra and by the dumping of wastewater and garbage from the unusually large
number of ships in the area, it said.

Phytoplankton growth is bad news in shallow, enclosed waters such as Kuwait
Bay because it starves the water of oxygen, killing fish and other aquatic
life.


http://www.haveeru.com.mv/english/news_show.phtml?id=1251&search=&find=

*  "BRAVO," THE WAR SONG ON TOP OF THE IRAQI CHARTS

BAGHDAD, March 31 (AFP) - "Bravo," a word frequently employed by Saddam
Hussein when addressing his military council, is now being hummed across
Iraq compliments of state television, which has turned the war motto into a
musical sensation.

With its slightly Latin melody, "Bravo," or "Afieh" in Arabic, extols the
bravery of the nation and its soldiers as they fight off a US-led assault --
and it is being played over and over and over on Iraq's state television
station.

While Saddam's propaganda apparatus has been repeatedly targetted by US and
British air attacks, "Bravo" was back up Monday on state television, which
returned to the air after a six-hour break following a Tomahawk missile
strike on the information ministry.

The song reaches deep into religious imagery. The army is linked with the
founders of Shiite Islam, the majority sect in Iraq, and with the thinkers
of the Sunni branch, which includes the country's rulers.

"Bravo to the men who defend what is right and the faith. Bravo, when the
heads fall of Bush and Blair and of all the criminals supporting the
aggression," goes one snippet sung by a choir led by well-known crooner Reda
al-Hayatt.

"Bravo to the household mother who welcomes the brave with sweets. Bravo to
the swords that will instill terror in the enemies."

It even has its own music videos. One shows a crowd on the street clapping
joyfully to the beat. A veiled woman dances frantically inside the circle as
a singer shoots his Kalashnikov into the air.

The song closely reflects the strategy of state television since the US-led
coalition launched the war on March 20 -- to reassure the people, to
illustrate that Saddam remains in charge and to bolster support among the
troops by showing not the slightest defection anywhere in Iraq.

In sharp contrast to Arab satellite channels' coverage of the conflict,
Iraqi television shows no gory footage of Iraqi dead or wounded or of
ambulances racing in the Baghdad night. All remains calm on the Iraqi side,
according to state television.

While at the beginning of the conflict the television broadcast footage of
US troops killed in action or taken prisoners, it now mostly tries a more
subtle approach, showing neatly arranged GI outfits and maps near destroyed
tanks.

The evening news is read by a journalist in the uniform of the ruling Baath
party and always begins with the activities of the head of state. Eager to
dispel Western speculation that Saddam has been killed or injured, the
president is seen both smiling and serious, holding meetings and receiving
guests.

Military statements are read in the shrill voice of an army sergeant. News
from abroad centers on anti-war demonstrations.

And there is more music, with a similar theme.

"I swear on God and Ali (the Prophet Mohammed's cousin revered by Shiites)
that with all the gold in the world (US President George W. Bush) won't
change the Iraqis, because Saddam is with us," sings Hashem al-Jaburi.

The television then heads to Amara, 450 kilometers (280 miles) south of
Baghdad.

"It seems that Iraqis are greeting the invaders with flowers?" the
interviewer asks a crowd at a coffeehouse with a deliberate naivete.

"No, with guns and knives," responds a man playing dominoes.

"The people say it with one voice: Saddam is the voice of our hearts," says
Yab Khodr.

Then it is on to footage of southern tribes armed with antiquated guns,
bludgeons and tridents -- weapons they used in a revolt against the British
army in 1920.

Women chant as they dance: "He who tries to penetrate our land, we'll chop
off his hand."

After footage from the Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Kerbala, where
residents swear their loyalty to Saddam, it is on to poetry recitation.

Najma al-Fartusi presented her new verse: "I don't want any perfume. I just
want to smell gunpowder."


http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,927022,00.html

*  CAPTURED IRAQI MILITIA FIGHTERS MAY BE SENT TO GUANTANAMO BAY
by Rory McCarthy in Camp as Sayliyah, Qatar
The Guardian, 1st April

US military officials have admitted they may send some of the prisoners
captured in the Iraq war to the American detention camp at Guantanamo Bay in
Cuba.

American marines at the city of Nassiriya have already rounded up more than
300 suspected paramilitaries dressed in civilian clothes and are keeping
them separately from regular Iraqi army prisoners, the Washington Post said
yesterday.

The paper said US officials might send them to join the 660 al-Qaida and
Taliban suspects being held at Guantanamo Bay. Conditions at the prison camp
there have been strongly criticised by human rights organisations as
breaching international law.

British and American officials are divided over the fate of the thousands of
Iraqi militia fighters who have put up fierce resistance. Britain's most
senior commander in the war said that he would want Iraqi prisoners to face
a war crimes court.

Regular Iraqi soldiers are likely to be allowed home after the war. There is
now a debate about whether the militia fighters should appear before the
newly created international criminal court or be sent straight to Guantanamo
Bay.

"This is the nub of the difficulty," a senior British military source said
yesterday. Although Britain has endorsed the international criminal court,
the US has not.

Air Marshal Brian Burridge, commander of British forces in Iraq, said that
prisoners guilty of war crimes, even if they were paramilitaries, should
appear in court.

"I do have a passionate personal belief that the only way to deal with
asymmetric warfare and this sort of irregular behaviour is to use the war
crimes process," Air Marshal Burridge said at the weekend. "I think that is
an important and powerful way of dealing with it. That is my personal view
but it is not me who makes the decisions; it is for ministers, politicians
and wiser people than me."

He said all prisoners should be treated as prisoners of war at first. "The
way you deal with it practically is you first assume the irregulars are
prisoners of war, then ultimately you discover they are not and then we will
want to treat them separately," he said.

Four thousand Iraqi prisoners have been captured; most of them are being
held at a British built camp in Umm Qasr, on the Iraqi border.

All were being held together for now under the rules of the Geneva
convention, the British military source said. "We just hold them in
accordance with the Geneva convention. What happens after that is a
different issue," the source added.

But US military officials told the Washington Post they were taking a more
aggressive approach when dealing with civilians who they thought might be
militia fighters.

"You round them up - that way they're not a threat," a senior marine officer
told the newspaper.

Officers admit the new tactics will do little to win the sympathy of the
Iraqi population but say they have little choice because of the tactics
employed by the militias.

"If we get a few who are innocent, I'm sorry, but we can't just let them go
out there and start shooting at us again," one senior US officer told the
newspaper.

Hearings will be held in Iraq to determine whether the prisoners will be
held as prisoners of war or declared "illegal combatants".

"We're still figuring this out because we thought we'd have mass surrenders,
not this crap," the senior officer said.

All fighters are deemed to be "combatants", though the irregular
paramilitaries may later be identified as "unlawful combatants", as al-Qaida
and Taliban fighters were during the war in Afghanistan.

British military officials said "terrorist" suspects should face a proper
legal process. "There is a strong feeling in the British contingent that we
are sending a message out to people in the al-Qaida fraternity that everyone
who engages in that sort of terror needs to know there is a proper legal
system that will see them locked up for the rest of their lives."

Iraqi militia fighters are from three main groups: the Saddam Fedayeen, the
Secret Security Organisation and the Ba'ath party militia.

Since the war began the vocabulary used by American generals to describe
these fighters has changed markedly.

Early last week generals stopped using the word Fedayeen, which means
"someone willing to sacrifice", and began calling them "irregulars". Now
they describe them as "terrorist death squads" and stress the
"terrorist-like" tactics they use.

In addition, General Richard Myers, chairman of the US joint chiefs of
staff, said on Sunday that the Iraqi regime had still not allowed the
International Committee of the Red Cross access to American prisoners of war
being held in Iraq. At least five American servicemen and women are being
held as prisoners and several more are reported missing.


http://www.haveeru.com.mv/english/news_show.phtml?id=1256&search=&find=

*  ARAB VOLUNTEERS LEAVE LEBANON TO FIGHT FOR "GOD AND IRAQ"
Haaveru Daily (Maldives), 1st April

More than 30 Arabs, mostly Islamists, left Lebanon on Monday to go and join
the Iraqi resistance against the US-led invasion, vowing to fight for "God
and Iraq".

The volunteers, most of them Lebanese but also including Palestinians, two
Egyptians and a Syrian, gathered at the Iraqi embassy in east Beirut where
they received their passports stamped with visas.

Before mounting the bus to Iraq via Damascus, the volunteers prayed in front
of the embassy. One of them said it was "the duty of every Muslim to engage
in jihad (holy war)" against invading forces.

They bade farewell to relatives, before mounting the bus.

"God is great!" and "We will sacrifice our souls and blood for you, Oh
Iraq!" they chanted as the bus left.

On arrival at the Masnaa border post with Syria, a 33-year-old Lebanese
father of three explained why he was leaving his family behind to risk his
life in Iraq.

"I am leaving my children in the hands of Allah. They have someone to take
care of them, whereas Iraqi children are under the bombs," said Nureddin
Abbud as-Seyyed, a native of Akkar, a poor region in northern Lebanon.

"We will defend all Arab lands, from Baghdad to Al-Quds (Jerusalem)," he
said.

Bystanders at the border post said that two earlier groups, totaling around
60 young people from the Bekaa Valley of eastern Lebanon, had made the
journey to Baghdad.

"I will go on this jihad (holy war) to honour God and defend Muslims against
the invaders," said Zafer Rafei, 27.

As the volunteers went through, other travellers at the border post cheered.

But one of the volunteers dropped out at the last minute. Rami Sleiman, a
35-year-old doctor, said family and friends had begged him to stay.

None of them were armed, saying guns were to be provided in Iraq. The
volunteers said they did not belong to any particular group and that they
were paying their own expenses, apart from not having to pay for Iraqi
visas.

In Beirut, the Iraqi embassy's press attache, Nuri Tamimi, said, "The action
of these young people proves they are aware, like all the Arab people, that
the whole Arab nation is targeted by the US-British aggression, not just
Iraq."

"It is a natural reaction of self-defense, because the battle for Iraq is
the battle of all the Arabs," he told AFP.

The Lebanese branch of Syria's ruling Baath Party, meanwhile, announced it
was opening its doors to volunteers.

"The Baath Party has decided to open the doors of its organisation in
Lebanon to persons wanting to volunteer to help the Iraqi people in their
drama and to fight for Iraq," the secretary general, Assem Kanso, told AFP.

"In the past few days, a large number of volunteers have already gone to
Iraq for this purpose," said Kanso.

Syria's foreign minister said Monday it had chosen to support the Iraqi
people against the "illegal" US and British invasion.

Iraq and Syria are ruled by rival wings of the Baath Party.

In Beirut, Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri said that "more than 5,000"
Arab volunteers had travelled to Iraq from "all Arab countries" to take part
in the resistance.

Iraqi General Hazem al-Rawi said more than 4,000 of the volunteers were
ready to follow in the footsteps of an Iraqi who killed four US soldiers in
a suicide bombing at a checkpoint in southern Iraq on Saturday.

Qatar's Al-Jazeera satellite television on Sunday showed a group of Syrian
volunteers who already arrived in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.

And the Palestinian radical movement Islamic Jihad said the same day it had
sent a first batch of suicide bombers to Baghdad to fight the US and British
invading forces.

Meanwhile, the head of the mainstream Palestinian faction Fatah in Lebanon
urged the Syrian and Lebanese presidents to allow Palestinian refugees in
Lebanon wanting to take part in the war in Iraq to cross their borders.

"Palestinians consider that the fight of the Iraqi people is like that of
their brothers against the Zionist occupation. We are united against all
invaders," Sultan Abu al-Aynain told a crowd in south Lebanon's Rashidiyeh
camp.


http://www.haveeru.com.mv/english/news_show.phtml?id=1256&search=&find=

*  CRACK US TROOPS UNNERVED BY IRAQIS FIRING FROM AMBULANCE, GARBAGE TRUCK
Haaveru Daily (Maldives), 1st April

Paratrooper Zach Talraas nursed his wounds on a hospital bed and shook his
head at how Iraqi troops firing from a garbage truck and an ambulance could
face down the the US army's elite 82nd Airborne Division.

"It makes the job a lot tougher. You have to take a second or half a second
before you can start firing in reference to determining if a target is
hostile or friendly like the ambulance," the private from Delta 325 Company
said.

The 82nd Airborne is one of the United States' most celebrated and
battle-tested units but it was clearly caught off guard by the
unconventional Iraqi tactics. The firefight around the town of Samawah left
several wounded, at least two seriously, and men like Talraas unnerved.

"Saddam's whole thing is to make us look like the bad guys in reference to
having to fight against guerilla tactics and people using ambulances as
cover," he said.

The platoon had been tasked with securing two bridges in the city. Taking
the first bridge "was almost too easy", said Talraas, but the next part of
the mission was anything but.

US troops driving in humvees first came under fire from civilian vehicles,
hitting back with 50 caliber rounds and Mark 19 grenade launchers.

They were again taken by surprise when a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) was
fired at them from a garbage truck, said Talraas.

"A man hiding in a dumpster fired an RPG at one of the humvees. Several
soldiers received small shrapnel wounds but were able to continue fighting.
The dumpster was destroyed with return fire," he said.

The respite was brief however as a white ambulance with red flashing lights
crossed the bridge and headed straight for the US troops before its
occupants also opened fire.

US troops returned fire and the ambulance retreated but they were then were
pinned down by sniper fire for the better part of an hour before a decision
was made to break contact, pull back and regroup.

Talraas tried to take cover behind his gun turret on the humvee but was
injured in the shooting. His driver was shot in the hand.

"My driver screamed and then I felt myself get shot," said Talraas.

"It was pretty scary. It reminded me of a scene from (the Vietnam war movie)
Full Metal Jacket."

Talraas stayed in his gun turret "to lay down suppressive fire as we had
another platoon on foot next to the humvee and couldn't just leave them".

The shooting eventually died down and the soldiers were able to retreat.

But Talraas said the incident had highlighted that the rules of combat in
Iraq are anything but black and white.

"All the combatants were in civilian clothing and not using any military
vehicles," he said.

Talraas was being treated at an Iraqi air base captured by coalition forces.
One of the casualties has been flown out of Iraq.




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