Iraq

Tony Blair may be sleeping a little less soundly in his bed following the launch of ArrestBlair.org. Brainchild of author and activist George Monbiot – who attempted his own citizen’s arrest of John Bolton at the 2008 Hay Literary Festival – the website has already raised over £13,000 for a “Justice for War Crimes” fund.

Anyone attempting a peaceful citizen’s arrest of the former prime minister can claim a quarter of the money in the fund, provided their actions are reported in…

The decision to invade Iraq in 2003 had “no sound mandate in international law”, a Dutch inquiry said on 13 January, in the first independent legal assessment of the decision. It emerged that the Dutch government had decided to join the war after Blair had sent the Dutch prime minister a private letter seemingly giving the British government’s views on Saddam’s nuclear weapons programme.
Under diplomatic protocol, “private letters” are the property of the sender and the British…

Marc Hall, a soldier based at Fort Stewart, Georgia, who has already served in Iraq, has been jailed for recording a protest song. Marc was due to have left the army this month at the end of his military contract. Instead he has been “stop-lossed” for a further deployment to Iraq. “Stop loss” refers to the US military’s power to require soldiers to remain in service beyond their normal discharge date.
Marc, a hip-hop artist, recorded “Stop Loss”, a song expressing his frustrations…

On 24 October, Lance Corporal Joe Glenton made headlines by being the first serving British soldier to take part in an anti-war demonstration. Glenton’s courageous stand against the unpopular war in Afghanistan is certainly welcome, but, as Dahr Jamail highlights in The Will to Resist, the UK trails far behind the US when it comes to resistance among the armed forces to the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

A US journalist who has reported from Iraq on the devastation wreaked upon…

The first attempt to forcibly return asylum seekers to central and southern Iraq ended in embarrassment for the British government, as 34 of the 44 Iraqis remained on the plane in Baghdad and flew back to Britain.
After protests from the Coalition to Stop Deportations to Iraq, Air Italy confirmed that it would no longer “operate air transport with asylum seekers or refugees”.

Contrary to popular belief, the British RAF did not drop chemical weapons on Iraqi Kurds in the 1920s, according to US historian Ray Douglas of Colgate University, New York.
While Winston Churchill, then war secretary, urged the use of the weapons on rebel Kurds, the nearest supply was in Egypt.
An official at the air ministry wrongly wrote in 1921 that tear gas shells were used in Iraq to “excellent moral effect”; however army general HQ in Baghdad said that no shells were used…

A former British military police officer told BBC Radio 5 on 11 October: “there were incidents running into the hundreds involving death and serious injury to Iraqis where the chain of command of the army had decided that the circumstances did not warrant a royal military police [RMP] investigation.”
The anonymous veteran said it was not a case of rotten apples: “we’ve got a rotten barrel.” Separately, three high court judges in Britain concluded that one of the RMP’s most senior…

The declaration of a semi-closed, semi-open, no-blame inquiry into the Iraq war is said to be part of British prime minister Gordon Brown’s strategy to secure his position as leader of the Labour party.

Interestingly, the announcement also hampers any thoughts the Conservatives may have of initiating their own inquiry with a broader remit if they win the next general election (the most likely outcome at this point) .

More important than these power games is the opportunity…

Short, wispy silver hair surrounds her freckled and slightly worn face. She speaks with a decisive tone, and though the tongue in which she speaks is unfamiliar to me, I was fascinated by the story of Hana Ibrahim when I met her in February at SOAS in London.

The lifelong Iraqi resident began campaigning for women’s rights about ten years ago and founded the Women’s Will Association, an Iraq- and Syria-based NGO, in Baghdad in 2004 and Gender magazine, which discusses women’s rights…

The Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at then-US president George W. Bush in December was sentenced to three years in prison on 12 March.

Muntazer al-Zaidi pleaded “not guilty” to the charges and could have received up to 15 years in prison. He said his reaction represented the attitude of the Iraqi people at the time.

Bush was holding a good-bye trip in Iraq when al-Zaidi shouted the president was “a dog” and flung his shoes at the president, saying they were a “…

The US’s top commander in Iraq, general Raymond Odierno, has appeared to claim that all US forces will be out of Iraq by the end of 2011 (as required by the agreement signed by the US and Iraqi governments at the end of last year): “By 2011 we’ll be zero.” (New York Times)
However, when the Washington Post asked Odierno what sort of US military presence he expected in Iraq in 2014, he foresaw a force of “probably around 30,000 or so, 35,000”, with many troops training Iraqi forces and…

What Kind of Liberation? is a detailed critique of the US authorities’ promise of an occupation which would liberate Iraqi women. It stands out from other writings on post-war Iraq, not only because Iraqi women are its subject, but because of the transparency of the authors in setting out how their own identities, gender, politics and activism have constructed their analysis.

The book is based on interviews with diaspora and refugee women or those able to travel outside, together…

The much-heralded US withdrawal from Iraq is turning out to be nothing of the kind. The US-Iraq Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA - see PN 2504) – which commits the US to withdrawing its combat forces “from Iraqi cities, villages and localities… no later than June 30, 2009”, and to withdrawing all US forces “from all Iraqi territory no later than December 31, 2011” (article 24) – was ratified by the Iraqi Parliament on 27 November, and approved by Iraq’s presidential council on 4 December.…

One million Iraqis
The most-censored story of the year was the estimate by a reputable British polling agency that over 1,000,000 Iraqis had died violently as a result of the invasion and occupation.

The story started in September 2007, when the mainstream polling agency ORB (widely quoted six months earlier and six months later for their work on Iraqi attitudes to the occupation) published an estimate of the number of Iraqis who had died violently since the 2003 invasion.…

As of 17 November, the US has a paper commitment to completely withdraw from Iraq by the end of 2011. In reality, such a withdrawal remains extremely unlikely.

On 17 November, the US ambassador to Iraq and Iraq’s foreign minister signed a Status of Forces agreement (SOFA) – not yet agreed by Iraq’s parliament – committing the US to withdrawing its combat forces “from Iraqi cities, villages and localities … no later than June 30, 2009”, and to withdrawing all US forces “from all…