Selves and Others

WASHINGTON, Oct 21 (IPS) - The reconstruction of Iraq is failing rapidly despite repeated claims of progress by the George W. Bush administration, according to a number of U.S. officials and reports released here this week.

Democratic Congressman Henry Waxman issued a report that found reconstruction efforts in the occupied Arab country have consistently fallen short of the objectives set by the administration two years ago.

This view was echoed by Stuart W. Bowen Jr., special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, in a congressional hearing Thursday.

Bowen, whose office issued several reports and audits in the past about Iraq, said that the security situation is sapping money and energy out of the reconstruction effort and that much less money than originally envisioned will be spent on Iraqi projects..

According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), a congressional watchdog agency, about 30 billion dollars was authorised through August 2005 to rebuild Iraq’s infrastructure and train and equip its security forces. But Bowen said Washington will have to be more realistic about what can actually be spent of that amount. (...)

Every village tour turns up surprises, even for people as experienced as those who work for the Riwaq Center for Architectural Conservation in Ramallah. Sunday two weeks ago, the first surprise cropped up in Jammala, a village that was not on the original itinerary. Riwaq sends out expeditions to locate new conservation projects, in addition to the 50 projects under way or already completed.

In Deir Ammar, as in six other villages west of Ramallah visited that day, the Riwaq team was looking for the local council building. They had a proposal to submit: Riwaq would underwrite the restoration of a historical building chosen by the local council in keeping with the needs of the village. (...)

Why did Haifa Hindiya, a 38-year-old married woman and mother of five, stab a soldier at a checkpoint on the first day of the month of Ramadan? Was it because she was battered and humiliated by her husband, as her family claims? Or because she was mentally ill, suffering from depression, as her husband alleges? Did the fact that her parents’ house was demolished three years ago, even though her parents had done nothing wrong, have an effect, as her brother claims? Was it because of the occupation, as claimed by Fatah, which immediately adopted her into the movement’s fold and declared her a shahida (martyr) after she was shot and killed by the soldiers at the checkpoint? (...)

Extracted from a speech delivered to a War on Want public meeting at the House of Commons by the American teacher and activist

On 16 March 2003, my cousin Rachel Corrie was crushed to death by Israeli soldiers operating a 64-ton armoured bulldozer, while she was attempting to prevent the demolition of the house of a civilian family, including five children, who were still inside.

The US-based Caterpillar Corporation built and sold this and thousands more bulldozers to Israel through the US government’s Foreign Military Sales Program. The bulldozers were then armoured for the purposes of demolishing civilian homes - illegal according to the Fourth Geneva Convention. (...)

Under the Royal Prerogative, the power to declare war or commit British forces to military operations is vested in the Prime Minister. The reason for this is that the powers of our Parliament are the result of Parliament clawing power from the monarch. But the monarch would not give up the power to make war and therefore this is now vested in the Prime Minister.

It follows that the Prime Minister could argue that the way in which he secretly gave his word to President George Bush in April 2002 that he would support him in an attack on Iraq was within his power. And the way the legal advice was manipulated, the risks of weapons of mass destruction exaggerated, and the position of France misreported, was legitimate as a way for the Prime Minister to keep the public on-side for a decision he had already made.

It is for the Prime Minister and him alone to decide whether there is to be war. His efforts to keep Parliament and public opinion on side became a presentational and not a democratic or legal requirement. (...)

Tony Blair’s power to send British troops to war will face its most serious challenge yet in the Commons today.

Clare Short, who resigned from the Cabinet over the Iraq war, is bringing in a Bill that would compel Mr Blair - and any other Prime Minister - to seek Parliament’s consent for any future military action.

Her private member’s Bill is expected to win substantial backing from MPs in the Commons today, but government business managers will almost certainly use Parliament’s complex rules to stop it becoming law. Mr Blair is opposing the measure, which he says would deny British forces the element of surprise that might be vital in some future conflict. (...)

BAGHDAD, Iraq A defense lawyer in Saddam Hussein’s mass murder trial who was kidnapped has been found dead, his body dumped near a Baghdad mosque, police and a top lawyers’ union official said Friday.

Saadoun Sughaiyer al-Janabi was abducted by 10 masked gunmen who burst into his office and dragged him away Thursday evening, a day after he participated in the first session of the trial, acting as the lawyer of one Saddam’s seven co-defendants.

His body, with two bullet shots to the head, was found hours later on a sidewalk near Fardous Mosque in the eastern neighborhood of Ur, near the site of his office, said police Maj. Falah al-Mohammedawi. His identity was confirmed Friday, al-Mohammedawi said.

Diaa al-Saadi, a senior lawyers syndicate official, said al-Janabi’s family confirmed to him al-Janabi was dead. ’’He was killed. It is confirmed,’’ al-Saadi said. (...)

A UN investigation has implicated top Syrian and Lebanese intelligence officials in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

The findings drew the first official link between Damascus and the killing of the popular opposition leader.

The exhaustive report into the 14 February car bomb that killed Hariri and 20 others, issued to the UN Security Council late yesterday, will almost certainly inflame tensions in the region.

The council, which is likely to use the report to pressurise Syria to ease its continued influence on Lebanon, is scheduled to discuss the report on Tuesday and may consider sanctions against Syria. Late next week, it will also receive a report from Terje Roed-Larsen, the UN special envoy on Lebanon-Syria, about disarming Lebanese militias. (...)

The US and Afghan governments are investigating claims that American soldiers in Afghanistan burnt the corpses of two Taliban militants, then taunted other Islamic fighters about the burning, a desecration of Muslim custom.

The alleged incident was apparently filmed by a freelance photojournalist embedded with a US Army unit in the hills near the southern city of Kandahar this month. Its authenticity does not appear to be in serious question. (...)

Nineveh has always been a place to conjure with, lurking in people’s schooltime memories or popping up in quiz shows as some sort of fabled ancient city. Founded by Nimrod, "the mighty hunter", it was in fact the last capital of the Assyrian empire, before the armies of Babylon razed most of it to the ground.

This week Nineveh was buried again. Its evocative name belongs to one of Iraq’s 18 provinces and, thanks to its multicultural population, Nineveh was the swing region for the referendum on the constitution Iraqis voted on last Saturday. How Nineveh goes, so goes the country, as you might say.

Remember the referendum? Last weekend the world’s airwaves were full of broadcasts about the success of the voting in which millions "defied the insurgents" by turning out to cast their ballots. Then we heard preliminary but "informed" speculation that the constitution had passed. Majorities of Kurds and Shias had given it enthusiastic support in the north and south-east. In Sunni areas, where voters had been expected to reject it, not enough had come forward to turn it down. (...)

[page 33 | Comment & Debate]

Sir: The trial of Saddam Hussein by an Iraqi court, on highly specific charges of relating to mass murder in 1982 (and thus prior to the full scale western re-engagement with Iraq, which predominated for the rest of the 1980s) is from the US point of view a carefully constructed exercise in damage limitation.

The Bush administration’s rejection of the International Criminal Court has been portrayed as a means of preventing US soldiers facing war crimes charges. It is also paying dividends in this case, in keeping "interfering" liberal European lawyers off the pitch, and thus the more unsavoury aspects of US foreign policy out of the full glare of the western media. On the surface a local trial for local people, it is taking place in the Green Zone under a US military occupation of Iraq.

The last thing the neo-conservatives want is Donald Rumsfeld’s "loans and weapons" meetings with Saddam Hussein (when in 1983-84 as Reagan’s special envoy, his job was to reintegrate Iraq into the US fold for policing the Middle East region) open to new scrutiny. (...)

in Baghdad

The journalist Rory Carroll was safe in Baghdad’s Green Zone last night after being released unhurt by his captors who seized him on Wednesday in a city suburb.

The Guardian confirmed the release of its reporter, an Irish citizen, and the British Government said he was "safe and well".

Mr Carroll spoke to his family and to British officials after his release. "He just said: ’I am safe and well and I have all my limbs on’," Mr Carroll’s father, Joe, said from his home in Dublin. (...)

[Statement from the Guardian: The Guardian tonight confirmed that its journalist Rory Carroll has been freed unharmed after being kidnapped yesterday in Baghdad. The news of his freedom came in telephone calls to his parents in Dublin, and to the Guardian.

He told the Guardian: "I’m absolutely fine, both physically and psychologically. I’ve been well treated, apart from a bit of initial roughness when they first took me."

Carroll was speaking from the office of Ahmed Chalabi, the deputy prime minister. He was due to be handed over to the British ambassador this evening.

Alan Rusbridger, editor of the Guardian, said: "We’re overjoyed that Rory has been released safe and sound. We’d like to thank all those in London, Dublin and Iraq who played a role in freeing him. Both British and Irish governments have been extremely helpful - as have many journalistic colleagues around the world and sympathetic groups and individuals in Baghdad."]

Rory Carroll, the Guardian journalist kidnapped in Baghdad on Wednesday, was freed last night after 36 hours in captivity in a dark underground cell.

Carroll phoned the Guardian to confirm that his captors, whom he described as Shia opportunists, had released him into the hands of the Iraqi government.

The end came when one of his captors received a mobile phone call and unbolted the door to the cell, telling him he was free to go. "He put me in the boot of his car and drove me alone and dropped me in the middle of Baghdad," Carroll said.

Last night he was under the protection of the Iraqi government in the heavily fortified Green Zone.

"I’m sitting having a beer and I feel absolutely fine - both physically and psychologically. I’ve been very well treated, apart from a bit of initial roughness when they first took me," he said. (...)

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