[casi] News, 26/03-02/04/03 (14)

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

News, 26/03-02/04/03 (14)

EXCITED KURDS

*  Many Iraqi troops being coerced to fight, defectors say
*  Kurdish fighters say they lack supplies
*   Kurdish fighters swarm into northern Iraq
*  Iraq attacks Kurdish positions in the north
*  The north: Kurds wait nervously as Iraqis retreat
*  Dozens killed as US special forces overrun 'terrorist' camps
*  Raid Finds al-Qaida Tie to Iraq Militants
*  SAS rescue claim after bungled operation

SULKY SHI'I

*  Rumsfeld Hopes for Shiite Iraq Uprising
*  'New Rome' turns deaf ear to wisdom
*  Top Iraqi clergy blast "immoral" war but hope to return from exile
*  Why 2003 is not 1991
*  Only U.S. expected uprising - Iraqi cleric


EXCITED KURDS

http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/world/5499324.htm

*  MANY IRAQI TROOPS BEING COERCED TO FIGHT, DEFECTORS SAY
by Paul Salopek
The State, from Chicago Tribune, 27th March

SULAYMANIYAH, Iraq - (KRT) - Bassam, an Iraqi foot soldier, faced two
enemies the night war erupted with America.

The first was George Bush: The American president's cruise missiles - some
400 of them, according to his platoon's overactive rumor mill - were
targeting his infantry unit in northern Iraq.

The second had no name, wore a bushy moustache and lived in a canvas tent
just a few yards away: He was an officer from Estikhbarat, or Iraqi Military
Intelligence. He was newly arrived from Baghdad, and his job was to shoot
down any soldier who dared desert. He shot at Bassam.

"I was lucky when I ran," the shy, 28-year-old Iraqi defector said with
dispassion and precision. "I made it alive to the Kurdish lines. Two people
in front of me did not. Eight behind me did not."

As the U.S. and British forces advancing on Baghdad come across growing
evidence that many Iraqi troops are being coerced to fight, interviews with
several defectors in northern Iraq suggest that the greater part of valor in
the Iraqi army isn't confronting well-equipped coalition troops but turning
one's back on the political enforcers who rally the troops at gunpoint.

Three soldiers who surrendered to pro-American militias in Iraq's northern
Kurdish zone in recent days described how Baghdad began deploying "execution
teams" to avert mass desertions March 17, the same day President Bush issued
his ultimatum for Saddam Hussein to rid his country of suspected weapons of
mass destruction.

Sitting in a Kurdish military prison and wearing the same grungy civilian
clothes they had used for their escape, they told how all information in the
ranks was so tightly restricted that soldiers caught with portable radios
are imprisoned or beaten.

And in conversations candid enough to include sharp criticism of the United
States, they poured out their scorn for a life in uniform that was steeped
in fear - from living with spies in every six-man infantry squad to the
ethnic shell games that post most southern Shiite soldiers to alien Sunni
regions in the north to keep potential deserters from slipping away into the
local populace.

"This isn't a prison," said a defector named Mushriq, 20, waving his hand at
the blank walls of the military detention center where he is being held in
the Kurdish city of Sulaymaniyah. "If you want to experience prison, join
the Iraqi army."

Like the other Iraqi deserters who managed to evade their unit's feared
Estikhbarat officer, he asked that only his first name be used to protect
his family in the southern city of Basra.

Of course, even U.S. generals admit that not all of Iraq's defenders are
being forced to fight.

Saddam's elite Republican Guards, members of the ruling Baath Party militias
and fanatical Saddam supporters such as the Fedayeen Saddam guerrillas have
battled coalition troops ferociously, and apparently of their own will.

But the discovery of regular army soldiers shot in the head on the road to
Baghdad and some baffling, almost suicidal Iraqi field tactics suggest that
many ordinary soldiers are being coerced into battle with the grimmest
results.

Nineteen Iraqi tanks, for example, were easily destroyed by superior British
forces Wednesday outside Basra in a battle that coalition commanders believe
was staged by Baath Party officials threatening violence against the tank
drivers.

"They go to their houses and hold a gun to the heads of their families,"
said Air Marshal Brian Burridge, the overall British commander in the war.

According to the three defectors from 1st Infantry Brigade defending the Duz
Khurmatu front in northern Iraq, less drastic tactics also serve to snuff
out any independent thinking in regular Iraqi troops.

"You are watched every hour by the officers," Bassam said. "The only time
you can speak freely is in the latrine, or by whispering when all the others
are asleep."

Yet even that is dangerous he said; every Iraqi platoon, which consists of
80 soldiers, is closely monitored by 15 or 16 Inthibat, or military police,
he said. These officers, who wear distinctive red berets and white belts,
are the eyes and ears of the execution teams that Saddam hastily stationed
with every Iraqi unit at the outset of the war.

"These men are monsters, they have no mercy," said Bassam, a professional
soldier with a matter-of-fact manner. "You stay far away from them. They are
the ones who order you to be shot.

"If they weren't at the front, half - no all - the Iraqi army would
surrender," he said.

Mushriq agreed that morale among regular troops was shattered. Meals
consisted only of rock-hard bread, most soldiers feared U.S. airstrikes, and
virtually all of them despised Saddam, he said.

At the same time, he expressed deep suspicions about U.S. motives in Iraq
and warned that the country would be "ankle deep in blood" if the U.S.
overstayed its welcome.

The story of the defectors' dash for freedom shows the risks that any Iraqi
soldier confronting coalition troops may face by throwing up his hands and
surrendering.

On the eve of the U.S. bombing campaign, Bassam, Mushriq and 11 other Iraqi
soldiers decided to make a break for the nearby front lines that mark the
boundary of the Kurdish ruled Iraq. While the execution team was eating a
midnight meal, the defectors quietly stripped off their uniforms, switched
into hidden civilian clothes and began picking their way through a
minefield.

Two of Bassam's companions were machine-gunned by the Inthibbat officers
before they cleared the no-man's-land. Eight more were killed by mortars
fired by their own comrades.


http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/world/5493825.htm

*  KURDISH FIGHTERS SAY THEY LACK SUPPLIES
by Brian Murphy
The State, Associated Press, 27th March

IRBIL, Iraq - Kurdish and American fighting men stood side by side guarding
a political meeting this week. But they seemed separated by decades.

U.S. Marines were outfitted with microchip communications links, flak
jackets and modified M-16 rifles with night vision scopes. The Kurdish
militia wore shabby fatigues and carried old AK-47 weapons that saw duty in
the Soviet-era East Bloc.

The contrasts in firepower and capabilities could be carried into the
battlefield if Kurdish forces are needed to join an attack from northern
Iraq, where about 1,000 U.S. Army paratroopers parachuted in and seized an
air base Thursday as a possible staging ground for a second front toward
Baghdad.

Kurdish commanders publicly say their militia units are fully ready to fight
alongside U.S. troops. But others, including some front-line forces, wonder
why their U.S. allies have left them with only guerrilla-style equipment and
no apparent safety measures such as gas masks and chemical suits.

"There is no doubt we will fight if needed, but I cannot say we are not
worried," said Jafar Jalal Mustafa, who manned a Kurdish checkpoint Thursday
in sight of Iraqi gunners near the town of Kalak. "We are brave, but bravery
doesn't stop bullets or poison gas."

The forces around him were a typical collection of Kurdish militiamen. All
had AK-47s in various condition, none of them new. A single rocket-propelled
grenade launcher leaned against a wall. Some militiamen had grenades
dangling from ammunition belts.

The Kurds have no tanks or armored fighting vehicles. The top-line arsenal
appears to consist mostly of mortars and heavy machine guns, either captured
from the Iraqi forces or bought on the black market and smuggled over the
border.

The uniforms ranged from crisp desert camouflage to the traditional
Kurdish-style costume of baggy trousers and thick cloth belt. One fighter
had green sneakers decorated with sailboats.

"We have only our guns and the Americans have everything," said Kurdish
fighter Ahmed Janizade. "Why is this?"

Part of the answer could be found in the deep opposition to the U.S.-led
campaign.

The top U.S. envoy for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan - one of two main
Iraqi Kurdish factions opposing Saddam Hussein - claimed neighboring Turkey
blocked shipments of chemical suits and antidotes such as Cipro for anthrax
and atropine for nerve gas. Turkish leaders strongly oppose any steps to
boost the Iraqi Kurds, fearing it could feed secessionist aspirations in
Turkey's Kurdish region.

The PUK representative, Qubad Jalal Talabani, also blamed the United Nations
for ignoring Kurdish prewar appeals to bolster military and civilian
preparations in the northern zone. "The U.N. ... did not want to be part of
something then that made it look like war was imminent," he told The
Associated Press in Washington.

The Kurdish-run enclave in northern Iraq has been under Western protection,
beyond the control of the Baghdad government, since the establishment of a
no-fly zone following the 1991 Gulf War.

"We're completely vulnerable to an attack now," Talabani said. "We wouldn't
even know if we were hit with a chemical weapons attack until it was much
too late because we have no detection equipment."

The issue of chemical attacks is extremely sensitive among Iraqi Kurds. In
1988, an estimated 5,000 people died when Saddam's forces used poison gas on
the town of Halabja, which many Kurds call "our Hiroshima."

One of the top Kurdish military commanders, Feridoun Janrowey, held out
little hope of gaining more sophisticated equipment before entering the
fight.

"This is the way it's always been for the Kurds - fighting with the little
we have," he said. "It seems the Americans will do it their way. We will do
it ours."

At the Central Command in Qatar, U.S. Maj. Gen. Victor Renuart said Tuesday
that the U.S.-led bombardment has concentrated on Iraqi missile sites
believed capable of "most immediately" threatening the Kurds. But Renuart
gave no indication that Kurdish forces would be resupplied.

"We have forces that are in and amongst and with the Kurds," he said. "And
that continues to provide them a degree of security that I think they're
comfortable with."


http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=2461220

*   KURDISH FIGHTERS SWARM INTO NORTHERN IRAQ
by Mike Collett-White
Reuters, 27th March

CHAMCHAMAL, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraqi Kurd fighters have crossed the frontline
into Iraqi government-controlled territory in the first such advance since
the start of the U.S.-led war in the country.

This correspondent saw a crowd of peshmerga, or Kurdish guerrillas, at a
forward checkpoint pointing to their own forces who had taken the hilltops
around 1.5 km (one mile) away.

There was no clash during the advance to the hilltops looking down on the
town of Chamchamal. The Iraqi soldiers had apparently fled their positions,
which had been bombarded by U.S. warplanes in recent days.

Scouts returning to the checkpoint as darkness fell said machineguns and
other light weapons had been abandoned.

Mam Rostam, a senior Kurdish commander, told Reuters that his fighters had
moved more than four km (2.5 miles) into what was Iraqi-controlled territory
until mid-afternoon Thursday.

"We have taken the hilltops and have moved four km into Iraqi territory,"
Rostam said, as a peshmerga fired shots into the air in celebration. But it
was unclear how significant the limited foray at a single crossing would
prove to be.

The advance followed increasing U.S. activity in the region in what is seen
as the start of a new front in the U.S.-led week-old war against Iraqi
President Saddam Hussein.

U.S. paratroopers landed in northern Iraq overnight, with Washington putting
the force at 1,000-strong from the 173rd Airborne Brigade.

But military analysts said a northern front to bolster the U.S.-led invasion
of Iraq would take weeks to become reality and would require a mammoth
airlift of armour.

Robert Karniol of Jane's Defence Weekly said the paratroop force was in the
north primarily to ensure stability in the area controlled by the Kurds, but
"it may find application in the advance on Baghdad".

"I'd say the first reason is the more apparent one and the second is a
potential one," Karniol said.

The road west from Chamchamal, in the Kurd-controlled northern Iraqi enclave
wrested from Saddam's forces after the 1991 Gulf War, leads to the strategic
oil hub of Kirkuk.

Rostam said he had sent scouts towards the city.

The abandoned forward defences are considered to be by far the weakest of
three lines of Iraqi forces between Chamchamal and Kirkuk.


http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c
=StoryFT&cid=1048313268330&p=1012571727159

*  IRAQ ATTACKS KURDISH POSITIONS IN THE NORTH
by Gareth Smyth in Chamchamal, northern Iraq
Financial Times, 28th March

Iraqi forces fired for the first time in the war at Kurdish-held positions
in northern Iraq on Friday night, after falling back from their previous
front line at Chamchamal the day before.

"Five artillery rounds hit the ridge which we now occupy," said a Kurdish
officer. "No one was hurt or injured."

Earlier in the day Kurdish peshmerga guerillas moved forward 1.5km westward
on the road from Suleimaniyah to Kirkuk.

Huge shell holes peppered abandoned Iraqi bunkers and trenches after days of
heavy US bombing. Military papers blew around in the wind, while helmet
fragments were among debris scattered across trip-wire mines.

Kurdish civilians were already stripping valuables from mangled wreckage.
"They stole from us and now we taking things back," said a young man
carrying an iron rod. "This can help to build a roof."

"We haven't exceeded our limits," said Rostem Hamid Rahim, local commander
of the peshmergas of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). "Don't write
anything that will upset the Turks."

Ankara has threatened to send troops into northern Iraq to curb the Kurds ­
leading Kurdish leaders to assure the US they would not move forward from
defensive positions.

Ankara is particularly sensitive about the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, just
30km west of Chamchamal, as they fear an autonomous Kurdish zone with Kirkuk
as its 'capital' would be a dangerous example for Turkey's 15m Kurds.

The Kurdish push forward has a psychological value. Nine days into the war,
the Kurds are frustrated at the minor role assigned to them by the Americans
in removing Saddam Hussein from power.

The Americans continued to land troops at Kurdish airfields on Friday, and
again bombed targets around the city of Mosul, but revealed nothing of their
plans for a long-promised 'northern front'.

US efforts on Friday went in attacking remnants of Ansar al Islam, an
Islamist group already heavily bombed by US planes, and holed up in
mountains east of Suleimaniya near the Iranian border.

Information about the attack came from reporters "embedded" with 1000 US
troops leading 10,000 PUK peshmergas.

The PUK is denying access to other journalists and has refused to estimate
civilian and other casualties in the bombed villages held by Ansar al Islam
and Komal, a second Islamic group.

A senior member of the PUK told the Financial Times he could only guess at
US intentions but that the Americans had ignored his advice about the
Islamic groups.

"They told me Komal were the teachers of Ansar," he said, "and that they
won't repeat their mistake of supporting [in Afghanistan] fundamentalists
from Saudi Arabia who went on to attack New York."


http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=392142

*  THE NORTH: KURDS WAIT NERVOUSLY AS IRAQIS RETREAT
by Patrick Cockburn
The Independent, 30th March

The peshmerga patrol was excited and a little edgy as it returned from the
outskirts of Kirkuk, a city the Kurdish leaders would like to capture if
doing so did not lead to a Turkish invasion.

The Iraqi army had just withdrawn into the city from its foxholes and
bunkers on the green ridge overlooking the smugglers' town of Chamchamal
after four days of heavy bombing by the US.

It was a very orderly retreat, in keeping with the Iraqi strategy of holding
the cities but not the countryside, where there is no cover from US
aircraft. As night fell, the Iraqi army even fired six shells into
Chamchamal, which showed they were still a force to be feared.

In the white painted Iraqi army barracks at Qarah Anjir, located in a
village of roofless houses from which Kurds were forced to flee 12 years
ago, almost nothing had been left behind, to the frustration of local
looters. A few old documents had been discarded, including a pink exercise
book which had been used to record salaries paid to the officers and men of
the 8th Infantry Brigade. The retreat, the first along the long frontline
between the Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq and the Iraqi army, had been
meticulously prepared.

In the barracks square there were still little notices indicating who had a
right to parking places. On the walls of the barracks, written in white on a
blue background, were faded slogans to inspire the troops. "On the day of
victory God wants to win honour and glory", read one. On another wall was a
list of all 33 countries that had participated in the first Gulf War against
Iraq in 1991.

Some peshmerga had found black gas masks in the bunkers and were waving them
in a friendly fashion. Jawdad Sharif said: "This proves that Saddam was
going to use chemical weapons."

A sign in Qarah Anjir barracks saying "Chemical unit No 8" did not prove
much, as it could have been for defence against chemical attack. If it was
for offensive purposes, it would have been unlikely to have advertised its
presence.

The forward patrols of irregular peshmerga who had pushed so close to Kirkuk
were nervous because they admitted they had done nothing to force the Iraqi
army to retreat. There was no reason, aside from US air power, why Iraq's
army should not punch straight back up the road to Chamchamal, brushing
aside the peshmerga with their AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenade
launchers.

Despite the Kurdish advance, it will be some time before Saddam Hussein
faces a real northern front. A thousand US paratroopers had landed early on
Thursday morning at the airstrip at Harir and were digging dugouts in the
muddy fields. But it may be a week before the whole of the 173rd Airborne
Brigade will be deployed in the north.

Their first target may not even be Kirkuk. The US already has forces in
western Iraq at the airfields of H3 and H4, so named because they are
settlements on the old pipeline. It would be easier for the US to attack
Mosul ­ where there are few Iraqi frontline units ­ from the west, while
Kurdish forces, along with US soldiers just parachuted in, attack it from
the north. But, despite the well-organised Iraqi retreat from Chamchamal, it
may not all be easy going.


http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=392445

*  DOZENS KILLED AS US SPECIAL FORCES OVERRUN 'TERRORIST' CAMPS
by Patrick Cockburn in Sherawa, northern Iraq
The Independent, 31st March

US special forces working with Kurdish militia have over-run the base camps
of Ansar al Islam, a small Kurdish Islamic group which achieved sudden
notoriety when the US administration claimed it was linked both to al-Qa'ida
and Saddam Hussein.

About 100 US Special Forces and 6,000 Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK)
peshmerga started their attack last Friday against an Ansar force of 700,
which for several years has occupied a narrow wedge of hills between the
eastern Kurdish city of Halabja and the Iranian border.

Barham Salih, the prime minister of PUK-controlled eastern Kurdistan, said:
"It was a very tough battle. You're talking about a bunch of terrorists who
are very well-trained and well equipped." He said 17 of his men and up to
150 Ansar militants were killed.

Ansar has been a thorn in the side of the PUK government, fiercely defending
its handful of villages close to the border with Iran, but in Kurdish
politics it was a small player.

It came to international attention when Colin Powell, the US Secretary of
State, claimed before the UN Security Council that Ansar had connections
simultaneously to al-Qa'ida and Baghdad. But it was always an unlikely
alliance.

General Powell said an al-Qa'ida member called Abu Musab Zarqawi had
established a "poison and explosive training factory" on Ansar territory. He
also said the Iraqi government had "an agent in the most senior levels of
Ansar".

The claim that Ansar was linked to al-Qa'ida was encouraged by the PUK,
which wanted to get rid of a local irritant, and could point to some 100
Arabs within the group who had previously been in Afghanistan. But Mr Salih
said Ansar had no link to Baghdad because the Iraqi Arabs with the group
were clearly anti-Saddam Hussein.

In the few villages it held, Ansar had instituted an Islamic regime similar
to that of the Taliban in Afghanistan where television, dancing, girls'
schools and women appearing without a veil were prohibited. There was little
firm evidence, however, that Ansar was connected to al Qa'ida.

The site alleged to have been the poison factory turned out to be controlled
by another Islamic group.

Mullah Krekar, the leader of Ansar, in exile in Norway, denied any link with
President Saddam, whom he frequently denounced. "As a Kurdish man I believe
he is our enemy," he said. He also denied that a senior Ansar Iraqi Arab
commander called Abu Wa'el was linked to Iraqi intelligence, describing him
as "a toothless diabetic, too old feeble to harm anyone".

Ansar could not have survived without Iranian support, probably channelled
through the Revolutionary Guards just across the Iranian border. In recent
months, however, aid has been reduced or cut off because Iran fears
complications with the US.

In an authoritative report on Ansar published earlier in the year, the
Brussels-based International Crisis Group said prophetically: "Should Ansar
lose its Iranian sponsor, it would be deprived of its critical fall-back
area across the border, and in the face of concerted PUK assault, possibly
with US assistance, it would not be likely to survive as a visible fighting
force."

Meanwhile on the front line north of Kirkuk, Iraqi forces have fallen back
seven or eight miles to a ridge defending the city. The withdrawal,
completed over the weekend, was carefully planned and retreating troops left
nothing in their bunkers. Troops to the east of Kirkuk also pulled back to
less exposed positions nearer the city.


http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=540&ncid=736&e=2&u=/ap/2003
0401/ap_on_re_mi_ea/war_iraqi_militants

*  RAID FINDS AL-QAIDA TIE TO IRAQ MILITANTS
by Dafna Linzer and Borzou Daragahi
Yahoo, 1st April

[.....]

According to a high-level Kurdish intelligence official, three Ansar leaders
‹ identified as Ayoub Afghani, Abdullah Shafeye and Abu Wahel ‹ were among
those who had fled into Iran. The official said the three were seen being
detained by Iranian authorities Sunday.

"We asked the Iranian authorities to hand over to us any of the Afghan Arabs
or Islamic militants hiding themselves inside the villages of Iran," said
Boorhan Saeed, a member of the pro-U.S. Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. "We
asked them about it Sunday, and still don't have a response."

[.....]

"What we've discovered in Biyare is a very sophisticated operation," said
Barham Salih, prime minister of the Kurdish regional government.

Seized computer disks contained evidence showing meetings between Ansar and
al-Qaida activists, according to Mahdi Saeed Ali, a military commander.

It was unclear how strong Ansar remains.

Officials from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of two parties that
share control of an autonomous Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq, say they
killed 250 Ansar members during two days of intense fighting and aerial
bombardments.

"There was ferocious fighting," Saeed said. He said he chased 25 Ansar
militants across the Iranian border and captured nine Ansar sympathizers
belonging to a group called the Islamic Movement of Kurdistan.

The remaining Ansar fighters are thought to be in the mountains along the
Iraq-Iran border, U.S. and Kurdish military officials have said.

Kurdish soldiers on Monday continued sporadic fighting in several villages
around Halabja and along the Iran-Iraq border near the village of Sargat,
site of a destroyed building once allegedly used by Ansar militants to
produce poison.

Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Sunday the
Sargat compound was probably the site where militants made a biological
toxin, traces of which were later found by police in London.

"We think that's probably where the ricin that was found in London came
(from)" he told CNN's "Late Edition." "At least the operatives and maybe
some of the formulas came from this site."

[.....]


http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,927770,00.html

*  SAS RESCUE CLAIM AFTER BUNGLED OPERATION
by Richard Norton-Taylor, and Rory McCarthy in Camp As Sayliyah, Qatar
The Guardian, 2nd April

An SAS operation near the town of Mosul in northern Iraq was foiled
yesterday when an armoured Land Rover and ammunition, including anti-tank
weapons, were seized, apparently after being dropped from a Chinook
helicopter.

British defence sources confirmed the embarrassing episode last night,
several hours after the Arab television network al-Jazeera showed footage of
local men parading the Land Rover, armed with a machinegun, along the
streets of a town close to Mosul.

According to al-Jazeera, 10 British soldiers were killed. The Ministry of
Defence said it could not confirm whether any had been shot. It said the
soldiers were quickly "extracted" from the scene.

Though the ministry never officially comments on the activities of British
special forces, some 200 have been operating inside Iraq for weeks. They are
understood to have helped to secure two airfields, H2 and H3, in western
Iraq near the Jordanian border, and to have been engaged in undercover
operations in and around Basra in the south.

One of their tasks is to pinpoint Iraqi targets for British and US aircraft
and long-range guns.

Yesterday's incident is the first confirmation that SAS soldiers are also
operating in the north. They are likely to be planning operations with
Kurdish forces.

[.....]


SULKY SHI'I

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/w-me/2003/mar/27/032703907.html

*  RUMSFELD HOPES FOR SHIITE IRAQ UPRISING
by Matt Kelley
Las Vegas Sun, 27th March

WASHINGTON (AP): Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld held out hope Thursday
that the Shiite population in Baghdad opposed to President Saddam Hussein
would stage an uprising against the regime, without the need for U.S. ground
forces to invade the city of 5 million people.

At a Senate hearing, Rumsfeld was asked what would happen once the tens of
thousands of U.S. Army and Marine troops now on the southern approaches to
Baghdad got to the capital.

Rumsfeld suggested that they would follow the example in southern Iraq of
the British handling of Basra, Iraq's second-largest city. British forces
have surrounded Basra for several days and are fighting loyalist Iraqi
forces on the outskirts while encouraging a Shiite rebel uprising.

Rumsfeld noted that, like in Basra, there are many Shiites in the capital.
"And they are not terribly favorable to the regime," Rumsfeld said. "They've
been repressed, and they are in the present time in Basra assisting us." He
said that roughly half of Baghdad population are Shiites.

"The regime has tended to be fearful of them and repress them," he said,
adding that he expected Saddam's loyalists to shoot any Iraqi troops in
Baghdad who try to surrender and those who might try to assist U.S. forces.

"We will go through a period where we'll have to deal with that problem.
We'll put in (air) strikes as necessary, we'll undoubtedly get assistance
from people inside the city, and we will attack them and subdue them," he
said.

[.....]


http://www.dailystar.com.lb/27_03_03/art5.asp

*  'NEW ROME' TURNS DEAF EAR TO WISDOM
by Ghassan Salameh
Lebanon Daily Star, 27th March

"New Rome doesn't listen" and is badly misreading the situation in Iraq and
the Arab world, according to Culture Minister Ghassan Salameh.

Determined armed resistance to the US-led military offensive in Iraq is no
surprise to Salameh, who said he expected the current war, with its
confused, multiple goals, to breed more conflict.

In an interview with The Daily Star, the minister said that simple numbers
should have convinced American war planners that the Iraqi regime of Saddam
Hussein would not go quietly.

"There are 3 million people in the (Iraqi Baath) party, and if 10 percent -
not even 50 percent, but 10 percent - fight to defend the regime, that's
300,000 people," Salameh said, arguing that American decision-makers were
"unwilling" to listen to this argument in the build-up to war.

The combined number of US, British and Australian forces deployed in the
Iraqi theater stands at about 300,000 - the coalition camp had talked of the
likelihood of seeing Hussein toppled quickly from within, with his police
state built on shaky sectarian and political foundations.

But Salameh argued that any effort by Washington to end the Iraqi regime by
force and effect democratic change in the region was a seriously flawed
policy, based on several misreadings.

"It was difficult for the Americans to make their case for the war. They
were basically the only ones to have believed their own propaganda. As far
as Iraq is concerned, I'm not surprised at all about the course of the war,"
Salameh insisted, saying he expected "successive wars" after the end of the
Iraqi regime.

"Basically, those in the US administration who have been preparing for this
war, some of whom I know, have accepted too easily the idea that the country
is made up of three different groups - Kurds, the Sunni Arabs and Shiite
Arabs," Salameh said, calling it a simplistic, "anthropological" approach.

He said he had unsuccessfully countered these arguments by reminding
colleagues in academia that the 1980-88 Iraq-Iran war had demonstrated the
patriotism by, for example, Shiite Iraqis, who formed the bulk of the army,
in a long, destructive fight with their co religionists.

The concept of the Hussein regime's Sunni base existing alongside restless
Kurds and Shiites, he said, was a false one.

"A lot of us were disputing this point in the past few years Š with my
American colleagues. I know of no regime that can last for 30 years with
only one single man and his tribe."

During the post-Gulf War rebellion of 1991, Salameh argued, people who were
not part of the regime participated nonetheless in the suppression of
uprisings against the state.

"It might not be politically correct (to say so), but everyone who knows
what happened in southern Iraq in 1991 knows perfectly well that it was not
only the regime that fought back against the rebellion, so we have a
precedent."

Patriotism and nationalist feeling are showing themselves to be far more
important factors than previously thought, he continued, meaning that hatred
of a foreign occupier will "naturally" outweigh hatred of one's own police
state, "or at least compete very strongly with it."

"But all this has been on the table for the past five or six years with
colleagues and friends across the Atlantic and nobody was willing to listen.
New Rome is characterized by its inability to listen," the minister said.

But Iraqis are apparently listening quite carefully - Salameh recounted
American neoconservative Richard Perle's written message to Saudi Arabian
officials a few months ago that "whatever happens to Saddam Hussein,
occupation is coming."

"And when this was repeated a week ago (by White House spokesman) Ari
Fleischer - if you were an Iraqi, you start asking yourself, 'if these guys
want to come to Iraq, whatever happens to the regime and even if Saddam
resigns, there is something beyond regime change.

"I believe this played a quite substantial role in determining the role of
some people," he said.

The minister listed several significant contrasts to the last Western-led
offensive against Iraq. In 1991, Salameh argued, the clear target of
liberating Kuwait was easier to build a coalition around. This time, there
is a "multitude of objectives, depending on the hour of the day."

"At breakfast you are told it's 'weapons of mass destruction' and when
lunchtime comes it's 'regime change.' In the evening, (Secretary of State
Colin) Powell tells you that 'we're going to re-engineer the entire Middle
East according to our interests and later on (UK Prime Minister Tony) Blair
will tell you 'no, no, no, we want to secure an Arab-Israeli settlement',"
Salameh said.

"When the objective is clear and single, you can build a coalition Š when
your objective is moving and shallow and not clear, that's why the coalition
wasn't built. This is basically a single-handed American attack, with two
countries (the UK and Australia) participating," he said.

"The first time around, it involved massive force and clear objectives -
amass your troops, crush the resistance and leave."

Even if the US achieves its military objective, the complications of the
post-war period appear formidable, and likely to backfire, he continued.

Salameh poured cold water on the assumptions of America's pro-war camp,
saying that officials like Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy
Paul Wolfowitz were pursuing a misguided strategy of democratization,
faultily based on the post-Cold War collapse of Eastern Bloc regimes.

"Iraq is not the Berlin Wall Š And democracy won't be brought in on the back
of Rumsfeld's tanks," Salameh said, disputing the idea that other Arab
regimes would be gradually transformed into free and open systems due to the
shock waves of the Iraqi regime's defeat.

"In Eastern Europe, the regimes were anti-US while their peoples were
covertly pro American, secretly listening to Voice of America broadcasts and
such things," he said, suggesting that Arab states presented a nearly
opposite situation - anti-American publics and regimes depending on the US
for political and other types of support.

"If there is somebody who thinks the Iraqis are ready to accept occupation,
wait until the regime collapses and see what will happen."


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

*  TOP IRAQI CLERGY BLAST "IMMORAL" WAR BUT HOPE TO RETURN FROM EXILE

QOM, Iran, March 31 (AFP) - Top clerics from Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority
slammed the US-led invasion as "unjust and immoral" even as they expressed
eagerness to return home from exile as soon as President Saddam Hussein's
regime was overthrown.

"Our theological school considers that any collaboration with the United
States is sacrilegious even if it involves fighting Saddam's regime,"
Ayatollah Mohammad Hadi al Razi told AFP to approval from fellow exiles in
Iran's main clerical centre.

His colleague Ayatollah Hassan Jawaheri recalled the aftermath of the 1991
Gulf war when Washington encouraged a Shiite uprising against Saddam only to
abandon it when it materialised.

"At the time, (then US president George) Bush encouraged the Shiites to
rebel and then betrayed them, giving Saddam the green light to repress
them," said Jawaheri, recalling the huge numbers of people killed in the
ensuing clampdown.

"We don't trust the Americans or the West," he said. "It's a sacrilege for a
Muslim country to be invaded by miscreants."

Forced into exile by Saddam 25 years ago, the four leading clerics
interviewed by AFP opened an Iraqi seminary in exile in this city south of
Tehran, which now boasts some 3,000 students.

The prospect of returning home tempers their anti-Western feelings, as does
the possibility that coalition forces will not remain long in Iraq after
they oust Saddam.

"We will not be able to say their actions were positive, but we will be able
to say we reached our goal," said Ayatollah Razi.

He and his colleagues plan to return "as soon as the situation permits ...
and even if the Americans are still in Iraq," he added.

At a gathering of some 300 Iraqi exiles, the theological school distributed
a statement criticizing Saddam for his "crimes" as well as the "immoral and
unjust" US-led invasion.

"We consider all domination by aggressive forces as a declaration of war
against all Muslims," said the statement.

The leading Shiite cleric left inside Iraq, Ayatollah Ali Sistani, had made
a call "banning any collaboration with the American and British aggressors,"
one of the exiled leaders told AFP

"We have the same views as the Shiite religious leaders in Najaf, except
that they can't say anything about the crimes of Saddam," he said.

As for plans for post-war Iraq, the four clerics stressed the next Iraqi
government should apply sharia, or Islamic law, as in Iran.

The four said they were looking forward to reviving the historic seminaries
and theological schools in Iraq's holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, the main
centres of pilgrimage for Shiite Muslims.

"We have big plans to restore primacy to Najaf and Karbala ... that have
suffered from the repression of Saddam Hussein's regime," said Ayatollah
Jawaheri.

"We will return to Najaf with our 3,000 students to spread the faith and the
word of God," he said.

According to diplomats in Tehran, mainly Shiite Iran is keen to use its
influence over Iraqi Shiites to advance its own interests in its western
neighbour, even if it is not known how far this influence extends.

Tehran hosts Iraq's main Shiite opposition group -- the Supreme Assembly for
the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SAIRI) -- as well as its armed wing, the
Badr Brigade, estimated to have some 10,000 to 15,000 men.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/analysis/story/0,3604,926946,00.html

*  WHY 2003 IS NOT 1991
by Dilip Hiro
The Guardian, 1st April

When Ali Hammadi al-Namani killed himself and four American soldiers in a
suicide attack near Najaf on Saturday, he put the final nail in the coffin
of the "liberation" scenario of the Washington-London alliance. The invading
Anglo-American forces will now have to keep all Iraqi civilians at bay,
treating everyone as a potential suicide bomber - just the way Israel's
occupation army treats Palestinians.

Earlier, any prospects of an uprising in the predominantly Shi'ite city of
Basra disappeared on Tuesday when Grand Ayatollah Mirza Ali Sistani issued a
fatwa, calling on "Muslims all over the world" to help Iraqis in "a fierce
battle against infidel followers who have invaded our homeland". Sistani is
based in Najaf, the third holiest place of Shi'ite Muslims, and it is likely
that Nomani, a Shi'ite, was following his fatwa. As the only grand ayatollah
of Iraq, Sistani is the most senior cleric for Iraqi Shi'ites, who form 70%
of ethnic Arabs in Iraq. Any Anglo-American attempt to devalue Sistani's
opposition to the invasion - by saying he's a Saddam stooge, for example -
will boomerang because of his status; there are only five grand ayatollah's
in the world.

By now it is apparent that the Anglo-American decision-makers made a
monumental miscalculation by imagining that Iraqis in the predominantly
Shi'ite southern Iraq would welcome their soldiers as liberators. It stems
from their blind faith in the unverified testimonies of the Iraqi defectors
combined with their failure to realise the complexity of the task of
overthrowing President Saddam Hussein's regime.

The Anglo-American policy makers failed to distinguish between the
situations in southern Iraq in 1991 and now; between a civil strife among
Iraqis and an armed conflict between invading infidel troops and Muslim
Iraqis; between Iraqis' loyalty to their homeland and their fealty to their
current ruler - not to mention their failure to fully grasp the importance
that Muslims in general and Shi'ites in particular attach to the holy city
of Najaf.

In their enthusiasm to topple Saddam, the hawks overlooked major differences
between the current situation in Iraq and the one that prevailed after the
Gulf war. In March 1991, the retreating, demoralised Iraqi soldiers - who
had hardly a clue why they had occupied Kuwait in the first place - rebelled
spontaneously, and found many civilians joining them. They also knew that
they had been put on the run by a coalition in which 13 of the 28 countries
were Arab or Muslim.

This time, Iraqi soldiers see their country invaded by non-Muslim troops
from America and Britain, their old imperial master.

Many of those Iraqis who hate Saddam loathe America more. They hold it
responsible for the UN sanctions which over the last dozen years have
reduced their living standards by 90% and caused them untold misery.

They know, too, that it is the Pentagon that has bombed Iraq six times since
the end of the 1991 Gulf war.

Grand Ayatollah Sistani's fatwa, therefore, reflects a prevalent feeling
among Iraqis of both Islamic sects, Shi'ite and Sunni. Their resolve to
resist is determined by their loyalty to Iraq. The Bush administration
overlooked too the fact that during the eight years of Iraq's armed conflict
with predominantly Shi'ite Iran, Saddam managed to retain the loyalty of the
Iraqi army, where Shi'ite conscripts formed a majority.

He did so by emphasising Islam while extending governmental control over
religious sites and sponsoring international religious gatherings. In April
1983 an Iraqi minister told an Islamic conference in Baghdad that all of the
nearly 3,200 Muslim religious sites were under total or partial gov ernment
supervision. After Iran's offensive in March 1985 had been repelled, Saddam,
a Sunni, offered much-publicised prayers at the Shi'ite shrines in Najaf,
Karbala and elsewhere. During the holy month of Ramadan he decreed that
government officials should hold fast-breaking banquets in public.

He went on to publish his family tree, which supposedly showed him to be a
descendant of Imam Ali, a cousin and a son-in-law of Prophet Mohammed,
entitling him to the honorific of sayyid (lord or prince) accorded to the
male descendants of Prophet Mohammed. The authorities distributed millions
of copies of Sayyid Saddam Hussein's family tree to emphasise his religious
credentials.

The caretaker of the shrine of Ali in Najaf has this family tree on the
walls of his wood panelled office. It is one of only three images there, the
others being a picture of the shrine itself, and a photo of president Saddam
Hussein at prayer inside the shrine's inner sanctum.

If there is any "collateral damage" to this shrine by the Anglo-American
forces in the course of a battle, it will inflame the feelings of Muslims
worldwide. For Ali is revered by both Shi'ites and Sunnis. Shi'ites regard
him as the only legitimate caliph after the Prophet Mohammed - ignoring his
earlier three predecessors - and Sunnis too invariably address him by the
honorific of caliph.

By invading Iraq despite the opposition expressed by Muslim and Arab allies
of the West, the US and British governments have opened a Pandora's box
which will now be hard to close.

Dilip Hiro is the author of Iraq: A report from the inside.


http://www.gulf-news.com/Articles/news.asp?ArticleID=82900

*  ONLY U.S. EXPECTED UPRISING - IRAQI CLERIC
Gulf News, 2nd April

Tehran, Reuters, 02-04-2003: A leading Iraqi Shi'ite cleric said yesterday
he had never expected a popular uprising to take place in southern Iraq as
U.S.-led forces moved towards Baghdad - only the Americans had.

Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir Hakim, head of Iraq's largest dissident party and a
key player in a Shi'ite uprising in Iraq in 1991, also said that any U.S.
attempt to impose a military backed government in Baghdad would backfire.

Asked why Shi'ites in the south did not rise up against Iraqi President
Saddam Hussein when the U.S.-led war started, Hakim said: "We did not expect
an uprising, the Americans did."

He did not say why he did not expect a revolt, but some Iraqi Shi'ites and
analysts had warned that Shi'ites in Iraq have reasons to be wary after they
were caught up in a U.S. fanned revolt against Saddam 12 years ago.

Former U.S. President George Bush encouraged Iraqi Shi'ites and Kurds to
overthrow Saddam during the 1991 Gulf War, but gave the rebels no support
when they found themselves hopelessly outgunned by Baghdad's tanks and
attack helicopters.

Shi'ites make up a large proportion of Iraq's 26 million people, who include
Sunnis, Kurds and Christians.

Hakim, head of the Tehran-based Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in
Iraq (SCIRI), said his group had fighters inside Iraq ready to fight and
contribute to the fall of Saddam.

Hakim's group claims most of its support from Shi'ites, especially in the
south around the city of Basra and in the Shi'ite holy cities of Najaf and
Karbala.

The SCIRI's armed wing, the Badr Brigade, has said for years it has
thousands of guerrillas throughout Iraq - mostly in the Kurdish-held north -
ready to fight Saddam's troops.

"We have tens of thousands of fighters, the majority of our forces, inside
Iraq," Hakim said. "They are fighting and they'll continue to fight until
the regime (of Saddam) is toppled".  He did not say what this "fighting"
entailed.

U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned last week that Iranian-backed
paramilitary units would be considered an enemy force if they entered the
fray and Iran would be held responsible.

The United States is thought to be wary of SCIRI because of its strong ties
with Iran. Hakim countered that "Rumsfeld does not have the right to prevent
the Iraqi people from fighting the dictatorial regime".

He said he would only accept a post-Saddam government if it was elected by
the Iraqi people.

"If that government is elected by the Iraqi people, we'll accept it," he
said, through an interpreter. "But if the government is appointed, we'll
resist with political means and if war is imposed on us, we'll fight that
war."




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