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Showing posts with label Iraq. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Iraq. Show all posts
Saturday, March 14, 2020
Friday, November 29, 2019
Thursday, November 28, 2019
Iraqi forces kill 28 protesters after Iranian consulate torched
* Protesters storm Iranian consulate in Najaf
* Anti-government protests began in October
* Commander says will protect Shi'ite Muslim authorities
* Consulate attack shows intense anti-Iran sentiment (Updates death toll, adds bridge blockage, attack on compound)
By John Davison and Alaa Marjani
BAGHDAD/NAJAF, Iraq, Nov 28 (Reuters) - Iraqi security forces shot dead at least 28 protesters on Thursday after demonstrators stormed and torched an Iranian consulate overnight, in what could mark a turning point in the uprising against the Tehran-backed authorities.
At least 24 people died when troops opened fire on demonstrators who blocked a bridge in the southern city of Nassiriya before dawn on Thursday. Medical sources said dozens of others were wounded.
Four others were killed in the capital Baghdad, where security forces opened fire with live ammunition and rubber bullets against protesters near a bridge over the Tigris river.
The incidents marked one of the bloodiest days since the uprising began at the start of October with anti-corruption demonstrations that have since swelled into a revolt against authorities scorned by young demonstrators as stooges of Tehran.
In Najaf, a city of ancient pilgrimage shrines that serves as seat of Iraq's powerful Shi'ite clergy, the Iranian consulate was reduced to a charred ruin after it was stormed overnight. Protesters accused the Iraqi authorities of turning against their own people to defend Iran.
"All the riot police in Najaf and the security forces started shooting at us as if we were burning Iraq as a whole," a protester who witnessed the burning of the consulate told Reuters, asking that he not be identified.
Another protester, Ali, described the attack on the consulate as "a brave act and a reaction from the Iraqi people. We don't want the Iranians."
But he predicted more violence: "There will be revenge from Iran, I'm sure. They're still here and the security forces are going to keep shooting at us."
So far, the authorities have been unyielding in response to the unrest, shooting dead hundreds of demonstrators with live ammunition and tear gas, while floating proposals for political reform that the protesters dismiss as trivial and cosmetic.
Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi has so far rejected calls to resign, after meetings with senior politicians that were attended by the commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards' Quds Force, the elite unit that directs its militia allies abroad.
"CUT THE HANDS"
In a statement that suggested more violence was to come, the military commander of the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), an umbrella group of paramilitary groups whose most powerful factions are close to Iran, suggested the overnight unrest in Najaf was a threat to Shi'ite clergy based in the city.
The paramilitary fighters would use full force against anyone who threatened Iraq's most senior Shi'ite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis said in a statement posted on the PMF website.
"We will cut the hand of anyone trying to get near al-Sistani," he said.
Fanar Haddad, senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore's Middle East Institute, said the government and its paramilitary allies could use the consulate incident to justify a firm response.
"It sends a message to Iran, but it also works to the advantage of people like Muhandis," he said. The paramilitaries could use the consulate incident as "a pretext to clamp down, and framing what happened as a threat against Sistani".
Sistani himself has appeared to back the protesters since the unrest erupted, calling on politicians to meet the popular demands for reform.
Authorities set up "crisis cells" in several provinces to try to restore order, a military statement said on Thursday. They would be led by provincial governors but include military leaders who would take charge of local security forces. (Reporting by John Davison, Alaa Marjani in Najaf, Baghdad newsroom; Editing by Janet Lawrence and Peter Graff)
Sunday, September 29, 2019
An example of moral relativism from our European betters. Being bribed by Saddam is a big deal. Who else is the next question.
Ex-French President Jacques Chirac was ‘bribed’ by Saddam Hussein: report
Jacques Chirac, the former French president who died last week at age 86, was a staunch opponent of the US-led war in Iraq — but that’s because he was secretly on Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s payroll, a new report reveals.
Chirac was bribed millions to publicly oppose the war, Sir Richard Dearlove, who headed Britain’s MI6 spy agency at the time, told the Daily Mail.
Intelligence agencies with both the UK and the US were on to the payoffs, Dearlove said.
“There were strong indications in the US and UK [intelligence services],” he said, that Chirac pocketed some $6 million from the Iraqi tyrant, money the French leader used for his presidential elections in 1995 and 2002.
“His recent obituaries are saying that Chirac got it right [on Iran] and the rest of us got it wrong. But I am saying that Chirac’s motive for getting it right may not appear to be what it was.”
Chirac had joined the leadership of Germany and Russia in opposing plans by the US and Britain to invade Iraq in 2003 on the ultimately mistaken belief that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
Chirac’s anti-war stance prompted The Post to deride the French as “cheese-eating surrender monkeys–” a taunt that persisted for years.
Thursday, July 18, 2019
‘Hope is Back’: Trump Helps Save Christians, Yazidis in Iraq from Extinction
‘Hope is Back’: Trump Helps Save Christians, Yazidis in Iraq from Extinction
U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration is helping bring Christians and Yazidis in Iraq back from the brink of extinction fomented by a genocidal campaign at the hands of the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL), religious minority representatives declared this week at the second Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom convened by the Department of State.
The U.S. government has officially determined that ISIS committed genocide against Christians, Yazidis, and other religious minorities during its reign of terror in the Middle East that began in 2014, prompting the Trump administration to launch a multi-million-dollar program to help the victims. Several religious leaders and organizations warned that the two groups were facing extinction in the wake of the ISIS genocide.
Echoing Yazidis activists and a U.S.-based Syriac Catholic Iraqi priest who spoke to Breitbart News, a Chaldean Catholic priest from a parish in a Christian Iraqi town indicated that hope for the future along with security improvements have returned to religious minority communities devastated by ISIS, courtesy of the Trump administration efforts.
Monday, June 24, 2019
Why does the UN want these enemy combatants released?
Islamic State captives 'must be tried or freed', says UN's Bachelet
GETTY IMAGES
The UN says tens of thousands of Islamic State fighters and family members being held in Iraq and Syria must be tried or released.
Human rights chief Michelle Bachelet also called on countries to take responsibility for their citizens and take them back if not charged.
The last IS strongholds fell in March and some 55,000 people are being held., including thousands of foreigners.
But many nations have shown reluctance to bring their citizens back.
The countries fear prosecutions of IS fighters may be difficult and public opinion is often strongly against repatriation.
Some countries have also refused to recognise the children of IS members born in Syria and Iraq as citizens, despite their parents having nationality.
Ms Bachelet said that children in particular had suffered "grievous violations" of their human rights.
What has Ms Bachelet said?
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said there should be no doubt about what must happen to those being detained.
"Accountability through fair trials protects societies from future radicalisation and violence," she said, adding that continuing to detain individuals not suspected of crimes was not acceptable.
Ms Bachelet highlighted in particular the plight of children born to IS fighters, reported to number about 29,000.
"States should provide the same access to nationality for children born to their nationals in conflict zones as is otherwise applicable.
"To inflict statelessness on children who have already suffered so much is an act of irresponsible cruelty," she said.
Who are the captives and where are they being held?
A vast number are at al-Hol camp in north-eastern Syria, which has seen a huge increase since the collapse of the last IS strongholds in Syria.
About 1,000 foreign IS fighters were captured by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces but several hundred have already been transferred to Iraq for trial. Those remaining are mostly family members.
The UN says there are about 29,000 children of foreign IS fighters in Syria, 20,000 of them from Iraq, but overall there are about 50 nationalities.
France, Russia, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and the Netherlands have taken back some children. Australia also confirmed it had evacuated six children from a "bleak and complicated'' situation at a Syrian refugee camp.
But many nations have shown unwillingness to allow repatriation.
Researchers estimate that more than 40,000 foreigners from 80 countries joined IS in Iraq and Syria between April 2013 and June 2018.
Iraq has offered to try all foreign fighters captured in Syria. Several Frenchmen are among those so far sentenced to death since being transferred.
What is al-Hol like?
Ms Bachelet said conditions there were "deeply substandard".
The camp has seen an increase from 11,000 people to more than 70,000 following the collapse of the last IS bastion at Baghouz.
The BBC's Quentin Sommerville visited in April and said it appeared "ready to burst".
He said hundreds of children brought from Baghouz had died and the rest were at risk from sickness and disease.
Iraq was preparing camps on the other side of the border to take back its citizens but the fate of other women and children remained unanswered, he reported.
Thursday, May 23, 2019
Iraq's Christians 'close to extinction'
Iraq's Christians 'close to extinction'
The Archbishop of Irbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, has accused Britain's Christian leaders of failing to do enough in defence of the vanishing Christian community in Iraq.
In an impassioned address in London, the Rt Rev Bashar Warda said Iraq's Christians now faced extinction after 1,400 years of persecution.
Since the US-led invasion toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein in 2003, he said, the Christian community had dwindled by 83%, from around 1.5 million to just 250,000.
"Christianity in Iraq," he said, "one of the oldest Churches, if not the oldest Church in the world, is perilously close to extinction. Those of us who remain must be ready to face martyrdom."
He referred to the current, pressing threat from Islamic State (IS) jihadists as a "final, existential struggle", following the group's initial assault in 2014 that displaced more than 125,000 Christians from their historic homelands.
"Our tormentors confiscated our present," he said, "while seeking to wipe out our history and destroy our future. In Iraq there is no redress for those who have lost properties, homes and businesses. Tens of thousands of Christians have nothing to show for their life's work, for generations of work, in places where their families have lived, maybe, for thousands of years."
- Iraq's minorities fear for their future
- Christian persecution 'at near genocide levels'
- The Christian militia fighting IS
IS, known in the Arab world as Daesh, was driven from its last stronghold at Baghuz in Syria in March after a massive multinational military campaign, effectively spelling the end of its self-declared "caliphate".
Before that, it had already been expelled from Iraq's second city of Mosul in July 2017.
But churches, monasteries and homes belonging to Christian families have been decimated and thousands of families have not returned.
This week the archbishop warned of what he said were a growing number of extremist groups that asserted that the killing of Christians and Yazidis helped to spread Islam.
'Political correctness'
The archbishop went on to accuse Britain's Christian leaders of "political correctness" over the issue - he called the failure to condemn extremism "a cancer", saying they were not speaking out loudly enough for fear of being accused of Islamophobia.
"Will you continue to condone this never-ending, organised persecution against us?" he said. "When the next wave of violence begins to hit us, will anyone on your campuses hold demonstrations and carry signs that say 'We are all Christians'?"
AFP
His views on political correctness are shared in part by the Bishop of Truro, the Rt Rev Philip Mounstephen, who chairs the Independent Review into the Foreign Office's response to the persecution of Christians worldwide.
"I think the archbishop is right that a culture of 'political correctness' has prevented Western voices from speaking out about the persecution of Christians," he says. "I think though this is mainly to do with a reluctance borne of post-colonial guilt."
Bishop Mounstephen maintains that Christian persecution needs to be viewed from a global perspective and has multiple causes.
"If we only consider it in the light of Islamic militancy," he says, "we let a lot of other people off the hook who should otherwise be held to account."
Taking a historical perspective, the Archbishop of Irbil lamented the fact that in centuries past there was a happy period of fruitful cooperation between Christians and Muslims in Iraq, a time that historians have referred to as the Islamic Golden Age.
"Our Christian ancestors shared with Muslim Arabs a deep tradition of thought and philosophy," says Archbishop Warda. "They engaged with them in respectful dialogue from the 8th Century.
"A style of scholastic dialogue had developed, and which could only occur because a succession of caliphs [Islamic political and religious leaders] tolerated minorities. As toleration ended, so did the culture and wealth which flowed from it."
'Moment of truth'
Elsewhere in the Middle East it is a mixed picture for Christians in 2019.
Egypt's Copts, who constitute at least 10% of the country's 100 million-plus population, have come under sustained attack from jihadists who have bombed their churches and attempted to drive them out of northern Sinai.
But in February Pope Francis made a historic three-day visit to the UAE - the first ever by a pontiff to the Arabian Peninsula - in which he held a mass attended by an estimated 135,000 mostly migrant Catholics.
JEWAN ABDI
And in Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam and a country that has enforced a narrow, austere interpretation of Islam for the last 40 years, the first Coptic Christian mass was allowed in December.
In Syria, the Christian minority felt deeply threatened by the largely Islamist element amongst the rebel groups. With President Assad's forces now in the ascendant, as a result of some often brutal tactics, Syria's Christians may be breathing a small sigh of relief.
In Iraq though, the outlook for Christians remains bleak. Sectarian tensions between Sunni and Shia Muslims persist and there are still unknown numbers of IS fighters hiding out in the north and west of the country.
Archbishop Warda has reached a bitter conclusion about what the future holds.
"Friends, we may be facing our end in the land of our ancestors. We acknowledge this. In our end, the entire world faces a moment of truth.
"Will a peaceful and innocent people be allowed to be persecuted and eliminated because of their faith? And, for the sake of not wanting to speak the truth to the persecutors, will the world be complicit in our elimination?"
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