On 6 January 2012, the Committee approved the addition of the four entries specified below to the Committee’s List (the 1988 Sanctions List) of individuals and entities subject to the assets freeze, travel ban and arms embargo set out in paragraph 1 of Security Council resolution 1988 (2011):
Tag Archives: Iraq
Restrictions Easing on Women in Combat
(Julie Jacobson, File/AP Photo)
By Luis Martinez | ABC News – 14 hrs ago
The Pentagon on Thursday will propose rule changes that will allow more women to formally serve in jobs closer to the front lines.
Defense officials say as many as 14,000 positions could be opened up, though the restrictions on women serving in infantry combat units will remain in place.
The rule change reflects the ongoing reality that in a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, women were already dying in combat with the blurring of the traditional definition of front lines. Nearly 300,000 women have served in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and 144 of them have died in those conflicts.
The rule change is included in a report required by Congress as part of last year’s Defense Authorization Bill that has been overdue for months. The new rules likely will not go into effect until the summer if Congress raises no objections to the change.
Women will still be barred from serving in infantry combat units, defense officials say, but the changes will formally open up new positions at the combat battalion level that, until now, have been off limits.
Report: Minister cancels US-Iraq-Turkey counterterrorism meeting
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki (Photo: AP)
29 January 2012 / TODAY’S ZAMAN, ANKARA
Turkey’s interior minister has cancelled a Baghdad trip to join a trilateral meeting between Turkey, Iraq and the US to combat terrorism in the region, on the grounds that ties are strained between Turkey and Iraq following the Iraqi prime minister’s accusations that Turkey has intervened in Iraqi politics, the Turkish Milliyet daily reported on Sunday.
Interior Minister İdris Naim Şahin cancelled a visit he was going to make to Baghdad to participate in the trilateral working group, although the trilateral initiative plays an important role in curbing Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) terrorist attacks in Turkey, which are launched from the Iraqi-Turkish border, Milliyet reported. Şahin’s cancellation of the crucial visit was reported to be the result of Turkey’s deteriorating relations with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Turkish officials have called him “a thorn in Iraqi politics,” following his attack on Turkey for urging reconciliation with Sunni and Kurdish blocs. Maliki interpreted this as an intervention in the domestic politics of Iraq.
Al-Qaida Claims December 22th Baghdad Bombings | Jih@d
by Florian Flade
Just two days before Christmas numerous bomb explosion hit the predominately Shiite districts of Iraq´s capital Baghdad killing at least 69 people, wounding 180 others – most of them Shiite civilians. The sixteen different attacks took place only about two weeks after U.S. forces officially withdrew from the country.
Immediately blame was on Sunni militants linked to Al-Qaida. Today the “Islamic State of Iraq”, an umbrella organization which de facto represents Al-Qaida, has claimed responsibility for the December 22th Baghdad bombings. A written statement was released and posted in several Jihadi Internet forums.
The multiple attacks, Al-Qaida claims, were carried out “to support the weak Sunnis in the prisons of the apostates and to retaliate for the captives who were executed by the Safavid (Persian) government”. “Special operations”, as Al-Qaida calls the attacks, have allegedly targeted headquarters of the Al-Sadr Militia (Al-Qaida calls them “Army of the Devil”). Continue reading
Maliki acting like Saddam – Sunni bloc leader
Image via Wikipedia
By Suleiman Al-Khalidi
AMMAN (Reuters) – Iraq‘s Nuri al-Maliki is acting like Saddam Hussein in trying to silence opposition and he risks provoking a new fightback against dictatorship, one of Maliki‘s predecessors as prime minister said Tuesday.
Iyad Allawi, who leads the Sunni-backed Iraqiya bloc, said the televised confessions Maliki has used to demand the arrest of the country’s Sunni Muslim vice president were fabrications.
Speaking to Reuters two days after the final departure of the U.S. forces that ended Saddam’s Sunni-dominated rule, Allawi called for international efforts to prevent the Shi’ite premier from provoking renewed sectarian warfare of the kind that killed tens of thousands in the years after Saddam fell in 2003.
“This is terrifying, to bring fabricated confessions,” Allawi said shortly before leaving the Jordanian capital Amman to return to Iraq. “It reminds me personally of what Saddam Hussein used to do where he would accuse his political opponents of being terrorists and conspirators.”
Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, who has taken refuge in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region, denies allegations he ordered bombings and shootings against his opponents. The move against him, on the very day U.S. troops left the country, threatens to upset a balance among Shi’ite, Sunni and Kurdish factions.
“We fear the return of dictatorship by this authoritarian way of governing. It’s the latest in a build-up of atrocities, arrests and intimidation that has been going on on a wide scale,” said Allawi, who comes from the Shi’ite Muslim majority but who has drawn support heavily from disaffected Sunnis.
REGIONAL SECTARIAN CONFLICT Continue reading
Jury finds man guilty of aiding al Qaeda
BOSTON (Reuters) – A jury on Tuesday found a Massachusetts man guilty of supporting al Qaeda by translating Arabic messages and supporting militants through traveling to Yemenfor terrorism training.Tarek Mehanna, 29, was found guilty on all seven counts against him and faces the possibility of life in prison.
Mehanna was arrested in 2009 and charged with “providing and conspiring to provide material support to terrorists.” He was also charged with conspiracy to kill in a foreign country and lying to law enforcement officers.
Prosecutors said the defendant answered a call to action from Osama bin Laden to battle U.S. soldiers.
They said he traveled to Yemen in 2004 to seek terrorism training, but never received it, and had planned to travel to Iraq to fight U.S. troops.
They also said he translated videos and texts from Arabic to English and distributed them online to further al Qaeda’s cause.
Defense attorneys said Mehanna, a U.S. citizen, was merely trying to learn more about his Muslim heritage by studying Islamic law and translating classical texts. He traveled to Yemen to visit schools where he hoped to study, they said. Continue reading
US “Withdrawal” In Iraq Paves Way for US-Israeli Strike on Iran
Image via Wikipedia
18 decembrie 2011 de mihaibeltechi
Global elite maneuver into position for final leg of Middle East campaign, one year into “Arab Spring,” one step closer to global hegemony.
by Tony Cartalucci
December 18, 2011 - Nearly every option described within the Fortune 500-funded Brookings Institution 2009 “Which Path to Persia?” report in regards to US-initiated regime change in Iran has been carried out to the letter. From proposals to fund and arm terrorist organizations like the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), to fomenting foreign-backed “color revolutions” in the streets of Tehran, to carrying out covert US-Israeli military operations within Iran itself, it is clear that the Brookings Institution either was writing the playbook on conquering Iran or was reading from it when compiling “Which Path to Persia?” The only remaining options left are airstrikes and invasion.
The report extensively details using Israel as a US-proxy in attacking Iran in an attempt to cripple its nuclear program as well as destroy much of its security apparatus while maintaining “plausible deniability” for the attack’s US architects. It is also hoped that the airstrikes incur a sufficient Iranian retaliation (or at least the opportunity to stage a false flag operation in Iran’s name) to allow Israel and the United States to carry out a more extensive follow-up military operation against the Islamic Republic.
The primary hurdle described throughout the report’s examination of using a “unilateral” Israeli strike, however, was a US-occupied Iraq and the complications an Israeli airstrike would cause passing through the nation’s airspace on its way to bombing Iran. However with the US’ recentrushed “exit” from Iraq, this complication is no longer an issue. Continue reading
Remembering Basra
Nine years ago, I drove into Iraq one spring morning. As we leave it’s worth recalling: After all the angry commissions and self-serving memoirs, the war was always more complicated than it seemed.
BY SUSAN B. GLASSER DECEMBER 15, 2011
So much has happened since that it’s a shock to go back and remember. The smell of confusion on that first day of the ground war, when we rose in the middle of the night and drove our rental cars from the Kuwait City airport through the blowing sands until we found an obliging British unit that didn’t mind letting a pack of anxious, unauthorized reporters into Iraq. When we found ourselves facing gunfire — not parades — and little boys throwing stones, and mines placed along the side of Highway 8, the main road to Baghdad, the one that U.S. troops were even then pounding north on.
This was during the period that President George W. Bush so memorably, and incorrectly, referred to as “major combat operations” in his ill-advised victory speech a few months later. Of course, with nine years of hindsight, it’s fair to say it was most likely the safest time for an American to be driving around southern Iraq in a rental car, Motown music blaring, accompanied only by a few friends and a single shared interpreter whose Beirut dialect of Arabic was hardly any help at all in Basra as it turned out.
We did not see what we expected. But then again, who did? Could anyone have imagined where we would be nine years later, as another president and another era finally bring to a close the chaos unleashed that night in the warm air of southern Iraq? Continue reading
JBLM Stryker brigade shapes training with an eye on Afghanistan
Post by Adam Ashton / The News Tribune on with
Col. Barry F. Huggins, commander of the 2nd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Divisionaddresses mock Afghan civil leaders at an exercise earlier this month. / Photo by Sgt. Austan OwenJoint Base Lewis-McChord’s 2nd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division spent the past month training in the California desert with an eye on a possible deployment to Afghanistan, according to Army reports from its exercises.
November 29, 2011 10:46 am
Col. Barry F. Huggins, commander of the 2nd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Divisionaddresses mock Afghan civil leaders at an exercise earlier this month. / Photo by Sgt. Austan OwenJoint Base Lewis-McChord’s 2nd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division spent the past month training in the California desert with an eye on a possible deployment to Afghanistan, according to Army reports from its exercises.
Brigade commander Col. Barry Huggins went so far as to act out a ceremony marking the completion of a civil affairs project that would benefit Afghans. An Afghan flag fluttered above the exercise as Huggins depicted the pomp that would follow a bridge opening, an Army writer wrote. Continue reading
Kirkuk ‘may prove a fertile ground’ for Al Qaeda
Sunday27/11/2011November, 2011, 12:18 AM Doha AFP/Kirkuk
Iraq’s disputed oil-rich Kirkuk province may turn into fertile ground for militant groups including Al Qaeda after the US withdrawal, officials from the province warn.
Ethnically divided Kirkuk lies at the centre of a tract of territory which Kurdish leaders want to incorporate in their autonomous region in the north despite the opposition of many of the province’s Arab and Turkmen residents, and of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
“The US withdrawal and lack of readiness of the Iraqi security forces will be used by forces opposed to the political process, and in particular Al Qaeda,” Kirkuk provincial council member Sherzad Adel said.
Al Qaeda “want to have a foothold in Kirkuk,” he said, noting that “the conflict between the centre (Baghdad) and the region (Kurdistan), and the failure to resolve problems in Kirkuk are two factors that form fertile ground for terrorism.”
US forces have played the role of mediators in Kirkuk, and were involved in setting up the “Golden Lions” unit made up of Arab and Kurdish forces.
But all US soldiers except for a small contingent under US embassy authority are to depart Iraq by the end of 2011 leaving a dangerous security vacuum, officials say.
“We have indications that Al Qaeda is reorganising and coordinating with the other remaining armed groups to launch operations,” said Major General Turhan Abdul Rahman, the deputy director general of the Kirkuk police and commander of its anti-terrorism force.
There are signs that operations are in preparation including kidnappings and bomb attacks, Abdul Rahman said.
He expects Al Qaeda and other militant groups to focus their activities on Kirkuk and other north Iraq cities “because they are trying to stir up nationalist strife.”
