Iran: Massacre in Camp Ashraf in Iraq UNAMI and US urged to provide protection

Iranian opposition leaders savagely murdered

52 members of an Iranian dissident group People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran, PMOI, MEK have been murdered  in an early morning attack at their camp north of Baghdad on Sunday 1 September 2013. The attack was carried out by Iraqi military and special armed forces SWAT under direct command of the office of the prime minister Nori Al-Maliki who has close links to Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei.

Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the President-elect of the Iranian Resistance, described this massacre committed by Al-Maliki’s forces at the order of the religious fascism ruling Iran, a crime against humanity and a war crime.

Iran, Iraq: Ashraf Refugee camp massacre, Nori Al-Maliki responsible fo crimes against humanity

52 members of an Iranian dissident group People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran, PMOI, MEK have been killed in an early morning attack at their camp north of Baghdad on Sunday.

Iraqi security forces raided the camp Ashraf with intention to kill all 100 residents. No mercy on ther wounded refugees. They were killed in clinic while receiving treatment.

The attack, started unexpectedly at 5 a.m. local time (10 p.m. EDT Saturday) and carried on until late in the afternoon, Iraqi security forces tied the Iranian dissidents’ hands behind their backs and shot them in the head, a resident of Camp Ashraf who witnessed the attack said in a phone interview. He requested anonymity out of concern for his safety.

Iran: Camp Ashraf in Iraq, refugees attacked, handcuffed and shot in the head by Nori Al-Maliki Forces

Maryam Rajavi urged the United Nations and US government to take urgent action for protection of the residents by either transferring them all to the United States or settling the UN Blue Helmets in Camps Ashraf and Liberty in order to protect the residents.

Sunday’s  massacre in Ashraf, is a big crime against humanity and a war crime. Machine gunning unarmed and defenceless people while their hands are tied is a crime against humanity by all standards and silence vis-à-vis this crime is complicity in it.

Until Sunday 1 September afternoon at 17:00,  52 residents have been identified as killed in massacre in Ashraf. 

The Iraqi government is telling outrages lies to cover the ongoing massacre at Camp Ashraf. This is while the criminal Iraqi forces who continue to siege Camp Ashraf have not allowed any visit by United Nations Assistance Mission (UNAMI) to Iraq and the United Nations High Commissioner (UNHCR) Representatives to visit the camp for the past 10 hours as the death toll in the camp has reached to 44.

The Iranian Resistance calls on the American Embassy in Baghdad, the European diplomats, journalists and human rights organization based in Iraq to immediately visit Camp Ashraf and witness the ongoing massacre of Camp Ashraf residents.
Source: National Council of Resistance of Iran

Secret prison revealed in Baghdad

Forces under the office of Prime Minister Maliki held hundreds of Sunni men at the facility. The U.S. fears that the news will stoke instability.

By Ned Parker

Los Angeles Times - Reporting from Baghdad - Hundreds of Sunni men disappeared for months into a secret Baghdad prison under the jurisdiction of Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's military office, where many were routinely tortured until the country's Human Rights Ministry gained access to the facility, Iraqi officials say.

The men were detained by the Iraqi army in October in sweeps targeting Sunni groups in Nineveh province, a stronghold of the group Al Qaeda in Iraq and other militants in the north. The provincial governor alleged at the time that ordinary citizens had been detained as well, often without a warrant.

Worried that courts would order the detainees' release, security forces obtained a court order and transferred them to Baghdad, where they were held in isolation. Human rights officials learned of the facility in March from family members searching for missing relatives.

Revelation of the secret prison could worsen tensions at a highly sensitive moment in Iraq. As U.S. troops are withdrawing, Maliki, a Shiite Muslim, and other political officials are negotiating the formation of a new government. Including minority Sunni Arabs is considered by many to be key to preventing a return of widespread sectarian violence. Already there has been an increase in attacks by Al Qaeda in Iraq, a Sunni extremist group.

The alleged brutal treatment of prisoners at the facility raised concerns that the country could drift back to its authoritarian past.

Commanders initially resisted efforts to inspect the prison but relented and allowed visits by two teams of inspectors, including Human Rights Minister Wijdan Salim. Inspectors said they found that the 431 prisoners had been subjected to appalling conditions and quoted prisoners as saying that one of them, a former colonel in President Saddam Hussein's army, had died in January as a result of torture.

"More than 100 were tortured. There were a lot of marks on their bodies," said an Iraqi official familiar with the inspections. "They beat people, they used electricity. They suffocated them with plastic bags, and different methods."

An internal U.S. Embassy report quotes Salim as saying that prisoners had told her they were handcuffed for three to four hours at a time in stress positions or sodomized.

"One prisoner told her that he had been raped on a daily basis, another showed her his undergarments, which were entirely bloodstained," the memo reads.

Some described guards extorting as much as $1,000 from prisoners who wanted to phone their families, the memo said.

Maliki vowed to shut down the prison and ordered the arrest of the officers working there after Salim presented him with a report this month. Since then, 75 detainees have been freed and an additional 275 transferred to regular jails, Iraqi officials said. Maliki said in an interview that he had been unaware of the abuses. He said the prisoners had been sent to Baghdad because of concerns about corruption in Mosul.

"The prime minister cannot be responsible for all the behavior of his soldiers and staff," said Salim, praising Maliki's willingness to root out abuses. Salim, a Chaldean Christian, ran for parliament in last month's elections on Maliki's Shiite-dominated list.

Maliki defended his use of special prisons and an elite military force that answers only to him; his supporters say he has had no choice because of Iraq's precarious security situation. Maliki told The Times that he was committed to stamping out torture -- which he blamed on his enemies.

"Our reforms continue, and we have the Human Rights Ministry to monitor this," he said. "We will hold accountable anybody who was proven involved in such acts."

But Maliki's critics say the network of special military units with their own investigative judges and interrogators are a threat to Iraq's fragile democracy. They question how Maliki could not have known what was going on at the facility, and say that regardless, he is responsible for what happened there.

"The prison is Maliki's becauseit's not under the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Justice or Ministry of Interior officially," said one Iraqi security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic.

The revelations echoed those at the beginning of Iraq's sectarian war. In late 2005, the U.S. military found a secret prison in an Interior Ministry bunker where Sunnis rounded up in police sweeps were held.

The latest episode, the U.S. Embassy report warns, could exacerbate tensions between Iraq's Shiite majority and Sunnis even with the facility closed.

U.S. troops already have pulled out of Iraq's cities, and Iraqi officials say U.S. influence is diminishing as the Americans focus on ending their military presence. The number of U.S. troops in Iraq is scheduled to drop by about half, to 50,000, by the end of August.

The embassy report cautions that "disclosure of a secret prison in which Sunni Arabs were systematically tortured would not only become an international embarrassment, but would also likely compromise the prime minister's ability to put together a viable government coalition with him at the helm."

Maliki's main political rival, Iyad Allawi, narrowly defeated him in parliamentary elections last month. Allawi, a secular Shiite, drew on dissatisfaction in Sunni regions around central Iraq. In the interview, Maliki invited Allawi to join him in forming a new government. But news of a secret prison that falls under the jurisdiction of the prime minister's military office could make it difficult for him to gain any Sunni partners.

The controversy over the secret prison, located at the Old Muthanna airport in west Baghdad, has also pushed Maliki to begin relinquishing control of two other detention facilities at Camp Honor, a base in Baghdad's Green Zone. The base belongs to the Baghdad Brigade and the Counter-Terrorism Force, elite units that report to the prime minister and are responsible for holding high-level suspects.

Families and lawyers say they find it nearly impossible to visit the Camp Honor facilities. The Justice Ministry is now assuming supervision of the Green Zone jails, although Maliki's offices will continue to command directly the military units.

The 431 detainees brought down from Nineveh were initially held at Camp Honor. Interrogations began after they were transferred to the prison at the Old Muthanna airport.

According to the U.S. Embassy report and interviews with Iraqi officials, two separate investigative committees questioned the detainees and abused them. During the day, there were interrogators from the Iraqi judiciary. In the late afternoon they came from the Baghdad Brigade.

The embassy report says that at least four of the investigators from the Baghdad Brigade are believed to have been indicted for torture in 2006. The charges against them at the time included selling Sunni Arab detainees held at a national police facility to Shiite militias to be killed.

In December, the Human Rights Ministry asked the judiciary to investigate Baghdad Brigade interrogators over allegations of torture at Camp Honor, but hasn't received an answer, Iraqi officials said.

With the secret facility at the old airport being shut down, and both Maliki and Salim, the human rights minister, hailing what they regard as progress, some Iraqis with knowledge of the security apparatus say they are worried that nothing will really change.

One former lawmaker with great knowledge of the prime minister's security offices called for radical change in the next government. "This is the beginning. We have to hold people accountable," the former lawmaker said. "It's a coverup of torture."

Source:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/middleeast/la-fg-iraq-prison19-2010apr19,0,7841354.story

Counterfeit US Dollars awash Iraq an Iranian attempt to influence Iraqi politics

Millions in counterfeit U.S. currency has flooded into Iraq since December, and U.S. and Iraqi officials are trying to determine how much of the counterfeiting is criminal and how much is an Iranian attempt to influence Iraqi politics.

NASIRIYAH, Iraq — While some bills were crudely made and easily detected, U.S. military officials said, much of the money seized has been sophisticated fake hundred-dollar notes that require special printing presses, ink and paper.

In the Middle East, such capabilities typically belong to Iran and its proxies, notably branches of the Lebanese Shiite Muslim militant group Hezbollah.

"It runs the gamut of the local stuff on the ... printer — not the right paper, but kind of looks like it — all the way up to the very well-made versions that we see, the ones coming in from Lebanon," said Army Col. Peter Newell, commander of the 4th Brigade of the 1st Armored Division, which operates in Maysan and two other southern provinces near the border with Iran.

In recent weeks, the officers said, Iraqi and U.S. forces have started an anti-counterfeiting push that involves educating merchants and bankers and gathering intelligence which lead them to the money whaich was linked to Iran's attempt to influence Iraq's March 7 parliamentary elections and to launder money for militia activity in Iraq's southern Shiite heartland.

Southern Iraq, with mostly Shiite provinces that border Iran, is the main entry point for Iranian goods: legitimate items such as produce and building supplies and contraband such as weapons, drugs and counterfeit cash. Iraqi and U.S. agents have seized about $500,000 of the fake hundred-dollar bills in the recent push, nearly all of it in Maysan and other provinces near the border.

The sudden influx of counterfeit notes three months before the March 7 parliamentary elections suggests that Iran was trying to influence the outcome.

An election "is certainly one of the purposes of a mass quantity of cash all of a sudden," Officer, Newell said. "It can pay for lethal aid; it can pay for elections; it can pay for commodities. It can be laundered into a lot of things.

Based on Source:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2011619190_counterfeit16.html

An unsettled alliance

 By Daniel Dombey and Tobias Buck

Financial Times, London- The world clustered around Barack Obama yesterday - with one very notable exception. Leaders of some 40 countries, from Argentina and Armenia to China and India, gathered in Washington to attend the nuclear security summit convoked by the US president. Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, stayed away.

Israeli diplomats attribute Mr Netanyahu's last-minute cancellation to Turkish and Egyptian plans to discuss Israel's nuclear arsenal. But his absence from an event intended to show US allies and partners rallying around the American president's agenda was, at the very least, deeply symbolic.

The US-Israeli alliance, for decades the cornerstone of Middle East power politics, is in rocky shape. The Obama administration is angry about Israeli settlements in occupied East Jerusalem. Mr Netanyahu's government is recoiling at what it depicts as Mr Obama's unreasonable demands.

The tension between the two sides has become a story of personal snubs and policy differences even as the US and Israel profess their devotion to each other. As George Mitchell, Washington's Middle East envoy, prepares to return to the region, US officials are considering eventually issuing outlines of their own for an Israeli-Palestinian deal - a turn of events Israel is desperate to avoid.

But at root, the differences stem from the two countries' contrasting reactions to an issue seen by both as crucial to their national interest, and, in Israel's case, to its national survival: Iran.

"The principal difference between now and previous administrations is the Iran problem," says a senior US official as he discusses the current US-Israeli stand-off. "From our perspective, it increases the urgency of Israel keeping the international community focused on that problem and not on other problems. And the Israelis need all of us to be working together on the common goal of keeping the pressure on the Iranians to back off."

Still, as diplomats and analysts study the underlying causes of the US-Israeli rift, there can be little doubt that the poor personal and political chemistry between Mr Obama and Mr Netanyahu plays a part. Their relationship is clearly much more confrontational than that between President George W. Bush and Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert, the former Israeli prime ministers.

Washington officials say Mr Obama was infuriated by Israel's announcement of the expansion of a settlement in occupied East Jerusalem during a fence-mending visit last month by Joe Biden, the vice-president. Little more than a week later, Mr Netanyahu paid one of the most ignominious visits to the White House of any major ally in recent years - out of sight of the media, left to confer with his team in the Roosevelt room while Mr Obama dined without him, and exiting the building without any agreement despite two meetings with the president in a matter of hours.

Mr Netanyahu also presides over perhaps the most rightwing coalition in Israeli history, while Mr Obama is widely perceived as among the most liberal presidents in decades. The Israeli leader is seen in Washington as obstructionist, while many Israelis regard Mr Obama as naive, inexperienced and - worst of all - the architect of a US policy of appeasement.

Mr Obama and Mr Netanyahu share the view that Tehran must be stopped from acquiring nuclear weapons capability, a scenario both maintain would destabilise the wider Middle East and embolden Israel's most committed foes. But there is a fundamental, and increasingly visible, rift on how best to respond. Crudely put, the Americans view Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts as the key ingredient in building an Arab coalition to curb Iran. Israel, by contrast, argues that a lasting Middle East peace is only attainable once the world has dealt with the threat from Tehran.

Speaking to more than 7,000 people at last month's annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), the powerful pro-Israel lobby group, Hillary Clinton, US Secretary of State, highlighted the propaganda value of images of the occupied Palestinian territories, calling for Israel to help change "the facts on the ground" to "refute the claims of the rejectionists and extremists and in so doing create the circumstances for a safe, secure future for Israel".

She added: "Behind these terrorist organisations and their rockets, we see the destabilising influence of Iran. Now, reaching a two-state solution will not end all these threats . . . but failure to do so gives the extremist foes a pretext to spread violence, instability and hatred."

The US is also stepping up work with Arab states to contain Tehran. But as General David Petraeus, head of US central command, said last month: "If you go to moderate leaders in the Arab world they will tell you that the lack of progress in the Middle East peace process causes them problems."

Mr Netanyahu's government treats the rise of Iran - and its nuclear ambitions - as an issue so urgent it leaves the peace talks in the shade. On his last trip to Washington he told members of Congress that the Palestinians were not presently a willing partner for peace. He also encouraged the passage of unilateral US sanctions legislation against companies investing in Iran - despite the Obama administration's objections.

The White House was not happy. "The more you resort to throwing your weight around in someone else's backyard the less compunction they will have about doing the same," says Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator now at the New America Foundation think-tank in the US.

In his own speech to Aipac, the Israeli prime minister brushed aside any suggestion that the broader conflict between the Muslim world and the west was linked to Israel: "Militant Islam does not hate the west because of Israel. It hates Israel because of the west - because it sees Israel as an outpost of freedom and democracy that prevents them from overrunning the Middle East."

This is not a view widely shared outside Israel. "We are all saying to Israel that if the main threat in the area is indeed Iran then they are not on the right road for a solution," says a senior western diplomat, stressing European and Russian support for Mr Obama's position.

The logic sketched out by the US and its allies goes as follows: containing Iran requires an Arab coalition; an Arab coalition requires an Israeli-Palestinian peace process; an Israeli-Palestinian peace process requires Israeli concessions; and the Israeli concession required right now is a halt to new settlement building in occupied East Jerusalem. In her Aipac speech, Mrs Clinton also argued that, in the absence of a peace deal, demographic trends and other factors put Israel's long-term survival as a democratic Jewish state at risk.

"They can stick to their position of principle on East Jerusalem but just because they can doesn't mean they have to," the senior US official says of the Israeli government. "And that's what we are suggesting, just out of their own self interest - some forbearance there to make it possible for the Palestinians to be more forthcoming."

Israeli analysts close to the Netanyahu government see things differently. "President Barack Obama capitalised on a minor Israeli glitch [the announcement during Mr Biden's visit] . . . to fabricate a crisis in USIsraeli relations," says Efraim Inbar, the director of the Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Affairs. "This appears to fit Obama's overall foreign policy approach of estranging democratic allies while appeasing anti-American dictators."

Yet to other Israelis the fighting talk of the country's political right masks a dangerous complacency. They note that Israel has become even more dependent on US military and diplomatic support than in the past.

"If you look at the threat perception in Israel, the threat is mainly considered to be coming from Iran. But it is also quite evident that Israel cannot deal with the Iranian threat on its own," says Shlomo Brom, a senior analyst at Israel's Institute for National Security Studies and the former director of the army's strategic planning division.

It is a view widely shared among US analysts. Israel, they say, is likely to need US assistance for any effective military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities - and to deal with the backlash certain to follow such an attack.

Meanwhile, there is considerable discomfort in Washington about some of Mr Netanyahu's language on Iran, which he has likened in the past to Nazi Germany. "I don't think it is in America's interest or of anybody else who is a friend of America to encourage America into a collision with Iran," says Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former US national security adviser. "The issue really is how can one achieve an outcome which is going to be good for the American national interest, ensure Israel's indefinite well-being and security, and some measure of genuine justice for the Palestinians?"

Many people maintain that Israel and the US will ultimately be able to patch up their differences and resume their traditional close relations. Powerful forces in Washington feel uncomfortable with the current tensions. Many conservatives view Israel as an ally unlike any other, a fellow democracy in a sea of authoritarian states. The administration's stance has found opposition or only muted support on Capitol Hill, where Aipac remains a formidable force despite increasing divisions among Jewish-Americans themselves. Leading Republicans have voiced sharp criticism of the tougher line on Israel.

That kind of support leads some Israelis to believe Mr Netanyahu can, and should, defy US pressure. As Dore Gold, the president of the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs and a former Netanyahu adviser, says: "The relationship between the US and Israel is not restricted to their governments . . . The people of the US are with us and Congress is certainly with us."

One thing is clear: even as the diplomatic tensions mount, no one in Washington is questioning the American commitment to Israel's security, a pledge described by Mrs Clinton as "rock-solid, unwavering, enduring and for ever". She boasted in her Aipac speech that Washington was increasing the $3bn military assistance the US delivers to Israel each year. Nor does the Obama administration see much scope in reducing other subsidies to Israel. All the same, some officials are looking at one possible source of pressure: eventually issuing US "parameters" or guidelines for a peace deal.

The Obama administration is, in other words, shaping a policy more nuanced than its predecessors': it seeks to blend a cast-iron commitment to Israel's security with a much more critical stance on settlement building and the peace process. As Iran continues its progress towards nuclear capability, it is a distinction that seems unlikely to disappear. For Mr Netanyahu and his government, uncomfortable times lie ahead.

Disputed territories

There are today more than 280,000 settlers living in 121 settlements in the occupied West Bank. There are at least another 180,000 settlers in occupied East Jerusalem. Their presence - in growing numbers - is widely considered one of the main obstacles to a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians because the settlements are located on land the Palestinians want to become part of an independent state. Though some settlers say they are ready to leave their homes should a peace deal ever emerge, others have vowed to fight any attempt to evict them - even by the Israeli government.

The quiet suburb at the centre of the dispute over Israeli settlements

Ramat Shlomo does not look like the centre of a major international dispute, write Tobias Buck and Daniel Dombey . Sitting on a steep hill just a short drive from downtown Jerusalem, the settlement's quiet streets are lined with modern buildings in cream-coloured stone. The residents belong almost entirely to Israel's ultra-orthodox religious minority.

To most Israelis, it is no more than a suburb of Jerusalem. To the rest of the world, however, it is an illegal Jewish settlement built on occupied Palestinian land. That is why a plan, revealed last month, to build an additional 1,600 homes there for settlers sparked a global outcry, as well as a crisis in US-Israeli relations yet to be resolved.

Many Israelis are angry at the sudden focus of US president Barack Obama's administration on settlement-building in East Jerusalem. After all, it follows years in which the US appeared to neglect the issue, and a face-off last year in which Washington was widely perceived to have backed down.

Along with the wider international community, every US administration for more than 40 years has held that Israel is an occupying power in East Jerusalem and the West Bank - the lands conquered, along with the Gaza Strip, during the 1967 war between Israel and its neighbours.

As a result, Washington regards all Israeli settlements on these territories as illegal. East Jerusalem, however, is particularly sensitive: the Palestinians want it as the capital of a future independent state; the Israeli government, in contrast, is committed to maintaining all of the city as the "undivided capital" of the Jewish state.

The Obama administration started with a very different stance from that of George W. Bush, which muted its criticism of settlement-building in the area. Last May, Hillary Clinton, secretary of state, called for building in all occupied territories, including East Jerusalem, to be halted. Eventually, however, she praised as "unprecedented" a 10-month Israeli freeze that covered the West Bank alone.

Today, US officials acknowledge two errors in that confrontation, which they say they will learn from: making explicit demands for a formal freeze, so reducing room for manoeuvre; and failing to plan their response to Israeli resistance to those demands. This time, Mr Obama and Mrs Clinton are pushing for a halt in announcements about East Jerusalem as opposed to a formal freeze. The Israeli leader, however, under intense pressure from rightwing allies to stand up to Washington, has yet to respond formally to the US on how he will handle future construction plans in the contested city.

Source:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7bef087e-4696-11df-9713-00144feab49a.html

Analysis: Allawi win could curb Iran's influence

By HAMZA HENDAWI (Associate Press)

AP - CAIRO — The surprisingly strong election showing by a secular, nationalist coalition in Iraq has provided a sudden opening for the mostly Sunni Arab world to curtail Iranian influence in Iraq, something that has been a source of serious alarm for the United States and its Arab allies since 2003.

The banner headline in Asharq al-Awsat, an influential newspaper in Saudi Arabia, said it all — "The Awakening of Moderation in Iraq" — offering an immediate endorsement of Iraq's top vote-getter by the regional Sunni Arab powerhouse.

The Iraqiya coalition led by Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite who has campaigned for better ties with the Arab world and keeping neighboring Iran at a distance, won 91 of the new legislature's 325 seats, edging Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's mainly Shiite bloc by only two seats. Allawi was prime minister in 2004-05.

The narrow win foreshadowed possibly months of hard-nosed negotiations over the formation of a new government. But Allawi's numerical victory was triumph enough for the mostly Sunni Arab regimes that have been wary of Shiite-dominated Iraqi governments since the 2003 U.S. invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein.

Sunni Arab governments have long kept their distance from Iraq's postwar governments. They have declined to send full ambassadors — first because of the U.S. occupation, then because of the precarious security and more recently because of their anger over perceived Iranian influence. But they have begun warming toward Iraq, and Allawi's ascension would likely tip the balance.

The United States has long maintained that Iran was fomenting violence in Iraq. Washington charges that Tehran provides Shiite militiamen with money, weapons and training and blames the deaths of hundreds of American soldiers in Iraq on a particularly effective brand of roadside bomb it says is supplied by Iran.

U.S. officials also claimed the banning by a Shiite-led vetting body of hundreds of candidates from running in the March 7 election for their alleged ties to the Saddam regime was inspired by Tehran. Many of those blacklisted were Sunni Arabs. Iran denies the allegations.

Significantly deepening the concern has been Iran's disputed nuclear program and its alleged support for militant groups like Lebanon's Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas in Gaza.

Iran has not officially commented on the election results, which were reported by the state-run news agency without comment. However, a senior lawmaker charged Saturday that Washington and Saudi Arabia had exerted their influence to get their favorite candidates elected.

"That's why the Iraqi elections have definitely been rigged," hard-line lawmaker Esmaeil Kowsari said.

Iran's main challenge to the region — building a sphere of influence extending from Iraq all the way to Syria, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip — makes any Iraqi leader with an anti-Iranian policy a favorite for Arab governments.

Although a Shiite, Allawi is no exception and has enjoyed friendly relations with Sunni powers like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates for years.

"Allawi will be able to strengthen Iraq's relations with the Arab world and will also be able to initiate contacts and improve relations with countries in the region," said Hani Horani, director of the New Jordan Research Center in Amman, Jordan. "He's capable of establishing balanced relations with all Arab countries and reversing Iraq's tendency to lean toward Iran."

The Asharq al-Awsat newspaper headline, which reflected relief as much as joy, mirrors the thinking in Saudi Arabia on Allawi's victory and al-Maliki's potential departure. The daily is owned by powerful members of the Saudi royal family and religiously toes the oil-rich kingdom's foreign policy line.

It is not certain at this point that Allawi will succeed al-Maliki as prime minister, but he stands a good chance if his bloc is able to join forces with enough other political groupings to gain an influential majority.

Even so, there are doubts over Allawi's ability to end or greatly reduce the influence of Iran's hard-line clerical regime, but sentiment against Tehran has been growing among ordinary Iraqis as well.

"Allawi is the hope of all Iraqis," said Fakhry Zaboun, a taxi driver from eastern Baghdad. "He will face up to the Iranians who want to occupy Iraq when the Americans leave."

The subsequent extent of Allawi's success in reducing Iran's influence in Iraq would depend to a large extent on who would be his partners in the next government.

His most likely options are the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, a large Shiite party established with Iranian backing in Tehran in the early 1980s; and supporters of anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, also believed to be linked to the Iranians.

It is doubtful that these two groups would be willing to entirely relinquish their ties with Iran anytime soon, but they could be persuaded to reduce or tone down the more conspicuous manifestations of their ties with Tehran if Allawi demands it as a condition for their participation in his government.

Iran and Iraq both have majority Shiite populations, and are bound by strong religious ties. Iraq also is home to some of the Islamic sect's holiest shrines, which are visited by millions of Iranians every year. Many in Iraq's Shiite political elite lived in exile in Iran for years during Saddam's rule.

Allawi, in contrast, spent most of his years in exile in Britain.

However, the two nations fought a ruinous, eight-year war in the 1980s in which a million people were killed or wounded. Memories of that conflict continue to feed mutual suspicion between Iraqis and Iranians.

Bonds of such complexity and strength are virtually impossible to eradicate, but there is much more leeway when it comes to Iran's political meddling in its neighbor. Furthermore, it is unrealistic to expect any Iraqi government to be outright hostile toward the country's powerful neighbor.

Amr Hamzawy, director of Middle East research at Carnegie — a Washington-based think tank — sees a gradual rather than instant effort by Allawi to reduce Iranian influence.

"There will certainly be a change of rhetoric, but nothing will change fast on the ground," he said.

Source:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ilEpV7_D2_Xx7h5M9wRyW4LwLCPgD9EN5NAG0

Taliban fighters being taught at secret camps in Iran

The Sunday Times

Miles Amoore in Kabul

THE Taliban fighters scurried up the craggy mountainside. As they neared the top, their 30-strong platoon split into three sections and they launched a ferocious assault on an enemy fort, opening fire from numerous positions.

The bullets they sprayed at the fort’s mud-coloured walls were blank, however. They merely pretended to fire their rocket-propelled grenades. When they reached the desert at the foot of the mountain, they did not race away on motorbikes, but filed into sand-coloured tents to refresh themselves with tea and naan.

The attack was a training exercise overseen by Iranian security officials in plain clothes. The Taliban do not know whether they were police officers, soldiers or secret service agents. What they can say is that in camps along the border between Afghanistan and Iran, Taliban recruits are being taught how to ambush British, American and other Nato troops using guns and improvised explosive devices (IEDs).

They are learning to attack checkpoints as well as mountain bases. Iranian instructors are also giving them target practice on desert ranges with Kalashnikov assault rifles.

In the past, Shi’ite Iran has opposed the Sunni Taliban. But western officials say Iran now wants to expand its influence within the Taliban movement.

A Taliban commander who has been trained in Iran said last week: “Our religions and our histories are different, but our target is the same — we both want to kill Americans.”

In recent months, senior American officials have accused Iran of playing “a double game” by training and arming the Taliban while supporting the Afghan government.

Taliban leaders interviewed by The Sunday Times last week provided the first direct evidence of how Iran is training insurgents on its own soil.

According to one Taliban source, emissaries travelled to Iran early last year to discuss a training programme with Iranian officials. The training began during the winter.

Working through local mediators, this newspaper persuaded two Taliban commanders who had attended the programme in Iran to travel to Kabul, the Afghan capital, to tell their stories. The men, interviewed separately in a partially constructed concrete building on the edge of the city, were both extremely nervous. “How do I know you are not spies and that you will not follow me when I leave?” said one before the interview began.

At times, their voices dropped to whispers as they spoke about their role in the insurgency and drank cups of tea on dirty cushions.

One of the commanders, from the central province of Wardak, described how he travelled to Iran with 20 of his men.

His journey took him south into Pakistan, then west to the border with Iran and on to Zahedan, a city of 600,000 people in southeast Iran.

The second Taliban commander, from Ghazni province in southern Afghanistan, took a group of his men on a five-day drive to Nimroz, in the southwest. From there, he crossed into Iran’s Sistan and Baluchestan province, a hotbed of drug smuggling and tribal rivalry.

The militants paid a $500 fee to Afghan people-smugglers using routes usually taken by refugees looking for work in Iran. They crossed the border at night in cars with the help of Baluch traffickers who guided the groups along dirt tracks to avoid checkpoints. After stopping to rest in the mountains, they headed out again at first light.

Finally, they were met by their Iranian instructors in white Toyota pick-up trucks and were taken to a village on the outskirts of Zahedan, an hour’s drive from the training camps.

There they were placed in basic compounds, each housing up to 30 Taliban fighters, mostly from the south and southeast of Afghanistan where the insurgency against British and American forces is fiercest.

Battered buses and pick-up trucks ferried the militants back and forth between the village and the camps every morning and night.

“Iran paid for the whole trip. We paid the travel fees to begin with and once we got to Iran they refunded us. They paid for our food, our mobile phone cards, any expenses,” said the Ghazni commander.

At one camp, a cluster of low tents erected in the shadow of a mountain, the Taliban fighters conducted live firing exercises, physical training and mountain assaults under the watchful eye of the plain-clothes Iranians, the commander said.

During a course lasting three months, the Iranian instructors worked in groups of two to five men. Their programme was split into three parts, each taking a month to complete.

For the first month, the recruits were taught how to launch complex ambushes on moving convoys. They learnt where to set up firing positions, when to trigger the ambush and how to escape before the enemy had time to respond.

“They were strong on the planning side. We would sit in the tents and they would take us through things like where the best escape routes were, making sure we had good cover and where to place our lookouts,” the commander said.

The second month was spent learning how to plant the roadside bombs that are responsible for most of the deaths of British soldiers in Helmand province. The insurgents were taught to use carefully positioned secondary and tertiary devices to kill or wound rescuers organising medical evacuations.

During the third month, the instructors taught the Taliban how to storm fixed enemy positions, climbing mountains in formation to launch attacks on checkpoints and bases.

“We were told ambushing was a very useful tool compared with a straightforward attack. They taught us how to select a good hiding position and how to limit the enemy’s response to our attacks by laying well- positioned mines,” said the commander. “We can kill a lot of our enemies this way.”

Both commanders said Iran also supplied them with weapons, often paying nomads to smuggle ammunition, mines and guns across the desert and mountain passes between Iran and Afghanistan’s western provinces. The nomads used donkeys, camels and horses to carry the military supplies into provinces such as Ghazni and Wardak, the commanders said.

Although the commanders believed that, after years on the battlefields of Afghanistan, they already possessed some of the skills that were taught in Iran’s camps, they agreed the training had improved their ability to launch more sophisticated attacks.

“I found some elements of the training in Iran very useful, especially the escape and evasion techniques I was taught,” said the commander from Wardak as he showed me video footage of his men patrolling on motorbikes with AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenade launchers slung over their shoulders.

The commanders gave no indication of precisely who was behind the training. Late last year General Stanley McChrystal, the US commander of foreign troops in Afghanistan, accused Iran’s al-Quds force — an elite wing of the Revolutionary Guard — of undermining the efforts of the Afghan government and Nato forces.

“The problem with dealing with the Iranian regime is knowing to what extent these initiatives are conducted by local commanders and to what extent they are backed by the government,” said a western defence source. He added that, although he had seen no direct evidence, the accounts of Taliban training camps in Iran were “credible”.

American officials believe Iran’s support for the Taliban has reached “troubling” proportions, although it is not on the same scale as its backing for Shi’ite insurgents in Iraq. The commanders’ accounts suggest the number of Taliban fighters trained in Iran may already have reached the hundreds.

Taliban militants still receive much of their training in neighbouring Pakistan. Elements of the ISI, Pakistan’s secret service, are known to train, equip and fund the Taliban. But a recent crackdown on Taliban safe havens in Pakistan has forced many insurgents to look to Iran for support.

“The military is pressuring the Taliban in Pakistan. It is certainly harder to reach places that were once easy to get into. I think more of my fighters will travel to Iran for training this year,” said the Ghazni commander.

Two weeks ago Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, said of the Iranians: “They want to maintain a good relationship with the Afghan government. They also want to do everything they possibly can to hurt us, or for us not to be successful.”

Days later, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran insisted he wanted to rebuild Afghanistan and criticised the presence of foreign troops.

The Taliban commander from Ghazni province said he had no doubt Iranian police and intelligence services knew about the training camps, however. “The government is not sleeping,” he said. “You just have to wiggle your ears in Iran and they will know about it.”

Source:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article7069817.ece

Euro MEP accuses Iran of rigging Iraqi vote

BRUSSELS, March 11, 2010 (AFP) - The point-man for European Parliament relations with Iraq accused on Thursday top Iraqi electoral commission figures of rigging the election at Iran's behest.

"I understand that very high officials from the Iraqi Electoral Commission have been caught cheating by entering false data on the election computer," said British conservative MEP Struan Stevenson in a statement.

He said they had been "caught red-handed attempting to manipulate the election results in favour of the incumbent Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki," in "blatant attempts" to "defraud the Iraqi people".
President of the EU parliament's delegation for relations with Iraq, Stevenson claimed the actions he was referring to were "clearly indicative" of an election campaign that "has included murder, intimidation, blackmail and fraud."

That campaign bore "all the hallmarks of being inspired, financed and managed by Tehran," he underlined, referring to neighbouring Iran.

Stevenson added that he had contacted the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Iraq in Baghdad, warning that "every hour that passes simply provides more opportunities for fraud."
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was in a tight contest to keep his job as he vied with ex-premier Iyad Allawi, initial election results from four of the country's 18 provinces showed Thursday.

The preliminary figures, which were announced once 30 percent of votes had been counted in the southern provinces of Najaf and Babil, put Maliki's State of Law Alliance first and the Iraqi National Alliance (INA), a coalition led by Shiite religious groups, in second place.

The INA said in a statement that it was concerned over "signs of intentions to change the election results."

Stevenson's statement was issued to AFP by his personal representatives and not by his political grouping at the parliament, but he added that his claims had "caused great consternation in Strasbourg," France, where the parliament is in session.

Complete results are expected to be announced on March 18 and the final ones -- after any appeals are dealt with -- will come at the end of the month.
rt/rl

© 1994-2010 Agence France-Presse

Iraq Election - Escalating allegations of fraud in favour of pro-Iranian and sectarian parties

PRESS RELEASE
For Immediate Release 6 March 2010

IRAQI ELECTIONS UPDATE
No. 1
Escalating allegations of fraud
A senior member of the European Parliament has claimed that he has received a flood of allegations of fraud in the run-up to tomorrow’s election in Iraq. Struan Stevenson MEP, President of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations with Iraq says that after he published a special email address last week (ep.iraqielectionfraud@gmail.com) and invited Iraqis to send him details of any incidences of fraud they uncovered, he has been inundated with communications from across Iraq that have given him great cause for concern.

Speaking on the eve of the Iraqi poll Struan Stevenson said:
“Voting has started already in many countries of the Middle East and around the world where there are large numbers of Iraqi refugees and exiles. Voting for the Iraqi military and security forces is also underway and I have received a large number of emails detailing blatant attempts to manipulate the polls in favour of pro-Iranian and sectarian parties. My earlier fears that Iran would try to export its own crude system of electoral fraud and ballot-rigging to Iraq are now being realised.

“Some of the emails I have received include allegations of murder, violence, intimidation, bribery and corruption. I have been told of the assassination of key political figures such as Dr Soha Abdallah in Mosul, the illegal arrest of Najem Harbi – head of the Al-Iraqia slate in Diala province, together with an extensive campaign of arrests of Al-Iraqia supporters in Salaheddin and south Baghdad. Other evidence has been sent to me of candidates being attacked and beaten by the Iraqi security forces in Karbala and leaflets have been distributed threatening violence and death to supporters of some of the nationalist and non-sectarian parties. Massive amounts of, allegedly, Iranian cash has been distributed to buy votes and in one case apparently pistols were purchased and handed out to villagers in return for their pledges of support.

“I have also been given first-hand accounts of how 7 million ‘extra’ ballot papers have been printed, supposedly to replace any ballot papers that may be lost or stolen. This could, depending on the overall turnout in the election, amount to a 40% surplus of ballot papers and opens the door to serious possibilities for vote-rigging. I have even received an email from a former employee of the Electoral Commission for Elections claiming that polling stations are not being properly manned or supervised and that pens used for marking ballot papers contain ink which fades after a few minutes, enabling the ballot papers to be re-marked a second-time.

“All of these claims are deeply disturbing and all seem to point towards a tactic aimed at manipulating the election so that the non-sectarian, secular and nationalist parties are defeated and victory is handed to the sectarian, pro-Iranian parties. These attempts to swindle the people of Iraq in the same way as the people of Iran were subjected to a phony election result last June, raise the spectre of extensive meddling in the electoral process by the Iranian regime.

“I have already issued a warning that Europe and the West will not tolerate a counterfeit election in Iraq. We have no desire to see that country plunged again into the dark abyss of sectarian violence which will surely follow in the wake of sham elections. I therefore call on the Iraqi government and Iraqi security forces to get a grip of this situation before it is too late and ensure that the election is free, fair and transparent, enabling the true democratic will of the Iraqi people to be realised.”

Struan Stevenson, MEP
President,  Delegation for relations with Iraq
The European Parliament
Rue Wiertz,  B-1047, Brussels.

Tehran's vote-buying in Iraq

By David Ignatius

The Washington Post - Iran is conducting what U.S. officials say is a broad covert-action campaign to influence Iraq's elections next month, pumping money and other assistance to its allies. The best way to counter this assault, American officials have decided, is by exposing it publicly.

The most direct criticism of Iran's meddling has come from Gen. Ray Odierno, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq. In meetings with reporters during a visit to Washington last week, he focused on the role played by Ahmed Chalabi, an Iraqi who lobbied the Bush administration to invade Iraq in 2003 and is now alleged to be working closely with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Odierno has also briefed top Iraqi leaders in Baghdad on U.S. intelligence reports about the Iranian campaign. A source provided me with an unclassified summary of Odierno's briefing, which included the following allegations:

-- "Iran provides money, campaign materials, and political training to various individual candidates and political parties [in Iraq].

-- "Iran interferes in Iraq's political process, urging alliances that not all Iraqi politicians favor, in an effort to consolidate power among parties supported by Iran. For example . . . Ahmed Chalabi met with IRGC Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani and Iranian Foreign Minister [Manouchehr] Mottaki in late November to discuss" the merger of two slates of Shiite candidates backed by Iran.

-- "Iran supports de-Baathification efforts engineered by Ahmed Chalabi for the purpose of eliminating potential obstacles to Iranian influence. Chalabi is also interested in Iran's assistance in securing the office of Prime Minister.

-- "According to all-source intelligence, Ahmed Chalabi visited Iran at least three times since last year. Additionally, he met with key Iranian leaders in Iraq on at least five occasions."

The decision to release this sort of intelligence information is unusual, and it reflects concern across the U.S. government about Iran's push to shape the March 7 Iraqi balloting. The United States has "information operations" and other activities in Iraq to counter the Iranians, but apparently it has not mounted a full-scale covert-action campaign of its own, in part because of a desire not to manipulate a democracy that America helped create.

"To covertly go after Iran, we're too late," says a top U.S. official. "What we can do is expose."

Chalabi, reached by e-mail, denied Odierno's allegations that he was acting as an Iranian agent: "These accusations resurface every time we take a course of action that is contrary to the political agenda of the U.S. . . . However, we forgive General Odierno because he captured Saddam [Hussein]."

Iran's operations in Iraq are directed by Soleimani, who is described by people who have met him as a brilliant, soft-spoken Persian version of John le Carre's master spy, Karla. He is backed by his deputy for Iraq, known as Abu Mahdi Mohandes, who U.S. officials say was involved in the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait in 1983.

The Iranians allegedly are pumping $9 million a month in covert aid to the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a Shiite party that has the most seats in the Iraqi parliament and $8 million a month to the militant Shiite movement headed by Moqtada al-Sadr.

The current Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, is said to play a delicate balancing game with Iran, opposing some of its moves and acceding to others. According to U.S. intelligence reports, a member of Maliki's staff hand-delivers sensitive documents from Tehran, thereby avoiding electronic communications that might be intercepted.

For the Iranians, maintaining a compliant government in Baghdad is a crucial matter of national security, especially for the generation that survived the Iraq-Iran war of the 1980s. Tehran is still settling scores for that conflict. According to U.S. intelligence reports, the Iranians two months ago circulated a list of 600 Iraqi officers who are targeted for assassination because of their role in the Iraq-Iran war. Asked what the United States was doing to counter these killings, a commander responded: "We notify people who are on the list."

"The Iranians are everywhere, all over the place -- overtly, covertly, you name it," says a White House official who closely monitors Iraq. "They're putting chips on red and black and whatever is in between."

The best check against these Iranian machinations, U.S. officials believe, is the simple patriotism of the Iraqi people. Opinion polls show that Iran is even more mistrusted by Iraqis than is America. Iranian meddling has backfired in the past, officials say, and they are hoping that will happen again when Iraqis go to the polls.

Sunni Iraqis fear disenfranchisement after hundreds of candidates banned

By Leila Fadel and Ernesto Londoño
Washington Post Foreign Service

BAGHDAD -- By barring hundreds of candidates from an upcoming parliamentary election, a controversial commission whose members have close ties to Iran is threatening to disenfranchise members of Iraq's Sunni minority and weaken its fledgling democracy.

The commission, led by Ahmed Chalabi, an Iraqi politician who supplied faulty intelligence to the United States in the run-up to the war, and Ali Faisal al-Lami, a former U.S. detainee, was established to help cleanse the Iraqi government of officials who adhered to the ideals of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party.

But the panel sent shockwaves through Iraq's political establishment when it recently announced the disbarment of 511 candidates for their alleged allegiance to the party. The move has led to recriminations that Iran, through proxies, is trying to rig the vote to ensure that Iraq is solidly in the hands of politicians loyal to Tehran.

U.S. officials, who were caught off guard by the decision, now fear that it could reignite sectarian violence and dash their hopes of political reconciliation in Iraq -- the end goal of the U.S. military strategy known as the "surge."

"If there is no balance, there will be violence," said Mustafa Kamal Shibeeb, a Sunni who was among those banned.

Outside a cemetery in the Sunni Baghdad district of Adhamiyah, Ibrahim Hamid, 22, glanced over a railing at about 6,500 graves of Sunnis buried during Iraq's sectarian war.

"This is Iraq," he said. "Always the men with dignity are banned. I'm sure there is going to be a lot of violence."

Many Sunnis boycotted a national election in 2005 to protest the U.S. occupation. Their disenfranchisement contributed to the rise of an insurgency and a civil war fought along sectarian lines. This time, there is little talk of boycotting, but there is widespread fear that Sunnis will once again believe they got a raw deal.

On Friday, at a Sunni mosque in Adhamiyah, the Iraqi army stopped a demonstration over the disbarments, residents said. Sunnis in Baghdad complain that in recent months the Iraqi army has sharply restricted movement in their districts, stifling commerce and imposing de facto martial law.

"People will keep their mouths shut," said Zaki Alaa Zaki, 38, a member of the local Sunni paramilitary force established by the U.S. military and now controlled by the Iraqi government. "We are the living dead now."

The committee that announced the disbarments is known as the Supreme National Commission for Accountability and Justice. Its chairman, Chalabi, is an erstwhile Pentagon and CIA ally who played a crucial role in the run-up to the invasion. He's fallen out of favor, and most U.S. officials now call him an Iranian agent. Chalabi's deputy on the commission, Lami, spent nearly a year in U.S. custody after being implicated in the bombing of a Sadr City government building that killed two American soldiers and two U.S. Embassy employees. He has denied involvement in the attack and claims that U.S. interrogators tortured him.

An aide to Chalabi said he was unavailable for comment. In an interview, however, Lami said he wasn't to blame that candidates failed to qualify for elections. He also disputed allegations, from U.S. officials and others, that he and Chalabi were acting at the behest of Tehran or in the interest of their own coalition vying for seats in the next parliament.

The list of barred candidates, which was endorsed by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, provides vague justification for the banishments. It includes Sunni and Shiite politicians, but it seems to disproportionately target prominent Sunnis and secular leaders. There were 6,592 candidates who were screened for Baathist ties.

Being labeled a Baathist in today's Iraq, which is led by exiles driven out by Hussein, is tantamount to being called a communist during the McCarthy era. The disbarment would be likely to benefit Maliki's coalition and the predominantly Shiite bloc that includes Chalabi and Lami.

Barred candidates have three days to appeal to a newly empaneled body of three judges. Sunni politicians and U.S. officials worry that the appeals process could inflame tensions and potentially derail the election, scheduled for March 7.

U.S. Ambassador Christopher R. Hill said he worries that the process could overwhelm the democratic system.

"It's a tough issue. It involves deep emotions," Hill said in an interview. "Frankly, the weight of these emotions sometimes exceeds the capacity of the institutional framework to handle them."

Vice President Biden called the Iraqi speaker of parliament Sunday to push back the disbarment of politicians until after the vote, according to the speaker's spokesman. But the call and other, similar efforts by the U.N. envoy to Iraq and Western diplomats appear to have gone unheeded.

Some Sunni leaders and analysts said more aggressive American intervention is the only way to avert a bigger crisis.

"We need to hear from you Americans. Please don't just watch this from the outside," said Mithal al-Alusi, a former member of the now-disbanded commission on de-Baathification. "The White House needs to move and move quickly."

Special correspondent Aziz Alwan contributed to this report. 

Source:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/18/AR2010011803475_pf.html