[Centraal] Irak na de oorlog - deel 36

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Op maandag 5 februari 2007 07:56 schreef Hurricane1 het volgende:
Van eentje wel ja deze is neergehaald door de Islamitische Staat Irak van Abu Omar al Bagdadi

http://www.sendspace.com/file/mo06c1

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Op maandag 5 februari 2007 19:27 schreef Hurricane1 het volgende:
http://www.rogepost.com/n/5633160345
http://www.openupload.com/?d=D0E129AA

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Op maandag 5 februari 2007 08:41 schreef CeeJee het volgende:

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Wat is het toch geweldig om bij het "verzet" te horen in Irak. Elke overwinning is een overwinning en elke nederlaag is ook een overwinning omdat je nou eenmaal in burgerkleren vecht en je gewoon zegt dat je smadelijke nederlaag een slachting van onschuldige burgers was. Met dank aan de pers.

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2006 was moordend jaar voor de pers, vooral in Irak
Guthrie Gray

WASHINGTON, 6 februari (IPS) - Vorig jaar werden er wereldwijd 55 journalisten vermoord. Het Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) in New York zegt ook dat er 134 verslaggevers omwille van hun werk achter de tralies zitten. Meer dan de helft van de vermoorde journalisten en persmedewerkers zijn Irakezen.

Voor het vierde jaar op rij is Irak het gevaarlijkste land voor journalisten. Volgens het CPJ werden in 2006 in Irak vier journalisten gedood als gevolg van "kruisvuur of oorlogsdaden", terwijl nog eens 28 perslui werden vermoord. De meeste slachtoffers zijn Irakese journalisten. Slechts twee ervan hadden hun basis in Londen.

Sinds de inval van de Amerikaanse troepen in Irak in maart 2003, zijn er volgens het CPJ in totaal al 97 journalisten op Irakese bodem gesneuveld. Daarnaast werden ook 37 tolken, chauffeurs en persmedewerkers vermoord die "collaboreerden" met de pers. “Bijna al deze moorden blijven ongestraft", zegt Joel Campagna van CPJ.

Terwijl verzetsbewegingen in Irak de pers doelbewust aanvallen om het regime in het land te ondergraven, gebruiken andere machthebbers geweld en censuur tegen journalisten om hun land te "stabiliseren". China spaant daarin de kroon. Vorig jaar zette de regering van president Hu Jintao 34 journalisten achter de tralies. Het CPJ spreekt over het "meest hardhandige optreden" van China sinds de rellen op het Tiananmenplein in 1989.

Wereldwijd zitten 134 journalisten in de cel. Een op de drie van die gevangenen is webjournalist, blogger of uitgever van onlinekranten. Het CPJ-rapport stelt verder ook de moordpartijen in Rusland aan de kaak en uit zijn bezorgdheid over de opkomst van populaire autocraten in Latijns-Amerika en de uitholling van het statuut van de oorlogsjournalist als onafhankelijke en neutrale waarnemer.

Het rapport komt er pas een week na de publicatie van een gelijkaardig jaarrapport van Reporters Sans Frontières. Die organisatie spreekt over een recordaantal journalisten dat in 2006 werd vermoord, en zegt al bezorgd te zijn voor 2007. In de maand januari alleen zijn namelijk al zes journalisten en vier persmedewerkers vermoord.

Reporters Sans Frontières wijst vooral dictaturen zoals Noord-Korea, Eritrea, Cuba en Turkmenistan met de vinger. Beide organisaties stellen zich echter ook steeds meer vragen bij de houding van democratisch verkozen leiders tegenover persvrijheid. Zo worden de Venezolaanse president Hugo Chavez en de Russische president Vladimir Poetin in het CPJ-rapport omschreven als "een generatie van intellectuele, verkozen leiders die een wettelijk kader hebben gecreëerd om de nieuwsmedia te controleren, intimideren en censureren".

Toch zijn er ook nog positieve signalen. Saudi-Arabië bijvoorbeeld heeft het voorbije jaar inspanningen gedaan om de "zwaar gecensureerde pers" meer vrijheid te geven. Lokale journalisten hebben er het initiatief aangegrepen om meer gedurfde reportages te maken over zaken als misdaad, drugshandel, werkloosheid en religieus extremisme. IPS (YD/PD)(EINDE/2007)

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US fears Iraqi insurgents have better missiles as helicopter is downed

Fears that Iraqi insurgents may be using either improved missiles or better tactics mounted after the fifth helicopter in just over two weeks was shot down by an anti-aircraft missile north-west of Baghdad.

The US Sea Knight was hit yesterday killing all seven people on board, according to an Iraqi air force official.

"The helicopter was flying and passed over us, then we heard the firing of a missile," said Mohammed al-Janabi, a farmer who was speaking less than half a mile from the wreckage of the twin-rotor C-46 troop carrier. "The helicopter then turned into a ball of fire. It flew in a circle twice, then it went down."

Flames and a huge plume of black smoke rose from the crash site not far from a farm house. Helicopters buzzed overhead and US troops rushed to prevent anybody else reaching the wreckage, 20 miles north-west of the capital near the town of Taji in an area where the Sunni insurgents have always been strong. The US forces in Iraq depend heavily on helicopters because patrols are frequently attacked by bombs in or beside the roads.

A claim of responsibility was made by the Islamic State of Iraq, an umbrella group of insurgents including al-Qa'ida in Iraq, who have said they shot down two other helicopters recently. The statement said the group would post a video of the shooting down of the helicopter on the internet later.

A US official said an investigation was under way and the crash appeared to be related to mechanical problems. In the past the US forces have preferred to attribute aircraft losses, at least at first, to accidents.

US military losses in Iraq have been rising in recent weeks though the overall level of deaths has been remarkably steady, according to the Department of Defence. In 2004, 848 US soldiers were killed and 8,002 wounded; in 2005, 846 killed and 5,946 wounded; in 2006, 821 killed and 6,372 wounded. Almost all US casualties have been suffered in fighting the Sunni insurgents. President George Bush's belligerent rhetoric in his State of the Union address, suggesting he was going to take on the Shia militias as well, could lead to a sharp rise in US losses.

But Muqtada al-Sadr, the nationalist Shia cleric whom the Mehdi Army follows, is determined to avoid a military confrontation with US forces implementing a new security plan to regain control of Baghdad. Sadrist officials say they would allow the US army into their bastion of Sadr City, home to two million people, but this probably means the militiamen would just go underground. The much-publicised "surge" in the numbers of US and Iraqi troops in Baghdad is proving very slow to develop. The Iraq Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki said: "I believe we've been very late and this delay has started to give a negative image." It is not clear that the US and the Iraqi government will have enough troops to search even a few neighbourhoods in Baghdad.

Meanwhile, the sense of anarchy in Baghdad has been increased by the government's admission that one of its own security agencies kidnapped Jalal Sharafi, an Iranian diplomat. Iran has accused the Ministry of Defence - heavily influenced by the US - of orchestrating the kidnapping using a commando unit. Four of the alleged kidnappers were arrested at the time.

The new US policy of detaining Iranians is humiliating for the Iraqi government. When US forces raided a long-established Iranian office in the Kurdish capital of Arbil in January, Kurdish officials say the first they knew about it was when eight US helicopters from the US base at Balad suddenly flew over the city.

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Iraqi insurgents offer peace in return for US concessions

For the first time, one of Iraq's principal insurgent groups has set out the terms of a ceasefire that would allow American and British forces to leave the country they invaded almost four years ago.

The present terms would be impossible for any US administration to meet - but the words of Abu Salih Al-Jeelani, one of the military leaders of the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Resistance Movement show that the groups which have taken more than 3,000 American lives are actively discussing the opening of contacts with the occupation army.

Al-Jeelani's group, which also calls itself the "20th Revolution Brigades'', is the military wing of the original insurgent organisation that began its fierce attacks on US forces shortly after the invasion of 2003. The statement is, therefore, of potentially great importance, although it clearly represents only the views of Sunni Muslim fighters.

Shia militias are nowhere mentioned. The demands include the cancellation of the entire Iraqi constitution - almost certainly because the document, in effect, awards oil-bearing areas of Iraq to Shia and Kurds, but not to the minority Sunni community. Yet the Sunnis remain Washington's principal enemies in the Iraqi war.

"Discussions and negotiations are a principle we believe in to overcome the situation in which Iraqi bloodletting continues," al-Jeelani said in a statement that was passed to The Independent. "Should the Americans wish to negotiate their withdrawal from our country and leave our people to live in peace, then we will negotiate subject to specific conditions and circumstances."

Al-Jeelani suggests the United Nations, the Arab League or the Islamic Conference might lead such negotiations and would have to guarantee the security of the participants.

Then come the conditions:

The release of 5,000 detainees held in Iraqi prisons as "proof of goodwill".

Recognition "of the legitimacy of the resistance and the legitimacy of its role in representing the will of the Iraqi people".

An internationally guaranteed timetable for all agreements.

The negotiations to take place in public.

The resistance "must be represented by a committee comprising the representatives of all the jihadist brigades".

The US to be represented by its ambassador in Iraq and the most senior commander.

It is not difficult to see why the Americans would object to those terms. They will not want to talk to men they have been describing as "terrorists" for the past four years. And if they were ever to concede that the "resistance" represented "the will of the Iraqi people" then their support for the elected Iraqi government would have been worthless.

Indeed, the insurgent leader specifically calls for the "dissolution of the present government and the revoking of the spurious elections and the constitution..."

He also insists that all agreements previously entered into by Iraqi authorities or US forces should be declared null and void.

But there are other points which show that considerable discussion must have gone on within the insurgency movement - possibly involving the group's rival, the Iraqi Islamic Army.

They call, for example, for the disbandment of militias and the outlawing of militia organisations - something the US government has been urging the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, to do for months.

The terms also include the legalisation of the old Iraqi army, an "Anglo-American commitment to rebuild Iraq and reconstruct all war damage" - something the occupying powers claim they have been trying to do for a long time - and integrating "resistance fighters" into the recomposed army.

Al-Jeelani described President George Bush's new plans for countering the insurgents as "political chicanery" and added that "on the field of battle, we do not believe that the Americans are able to diminish the capability of the resistance fighters to continue the struggle to liberate Iraq from occupation ...

"The resistance groups are not committing crimes to be granted a pardon by America, we are not looking for pretexts to cease our jihad... we fight for a divine aim and one of our rights is the liberation and independence of our land of Iraq."

There will, the group says, be no negotiations with Mr Maliki's government because they consider it "complicit in the slaughter of Iraqis by militias, the security apparatus and death squads". But they do call for the unity of Iraq and say they "do not recognise the divisions among the Iraqi people".

It is not difficult to guess any American response to those proposals. But FLN National Liberation Front contacts with France during the 1954-62 war of independence by Algeria began with such a series of demands - equally impossible to meet but which were eventually developed into real proposals for a French withdrawal.

What is unclear, of course, is the degree to which al-Jeelani's statement represents the collective ideas of the Sunni insurgents. And, ominously, no mention is made of al-Qa'ida.

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Op woensdag 7 februari 2007 13:01 schreef Monidique het volgende:
Misschien is er weer een helikopter neergestort. Gaat wel hard zo.

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"Everyone thought that there were weapons of mass destruction" at the time of the invasion, Aznar told a public gathering on Wednesday night in a Madrid suburb.

"There were none. I say it today," said Aznar who ordered Spanish troops to help in the invasion despite the opposition of a large majority of Spaniards.

"My problem is not to have known before, but at the same time no one knew," said Aznar, who along with British Prime Minister Tony Blair was a chief ally of US President George W. Bush over Iraq.

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Op vrijdag 9 februari 2007 15:13 schreef Hurricane1 het volgende:

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CH-47 Chinook door Al Qaida/ISI
[afbeelding]

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Op vrijdag 9 februari 2007 20:01 schreef sp3c het volgende:
dat is geen chinook

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Op vrijdag 9 februari 2007 20:15 schreef NorthernStar het volgende:
"Seven Americans were killed in the crash involving on Wednesday involving a CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter."

Dit maakt het weer een stukje lastiger voor de Amerikanen.

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Op vrijdag 9 februari 2007 20:20 schreef sp3c het volgende:
vreemde reactie maar ok

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Op vrijdag 9 februari 2007 21:05 schreef sp3c het volgende:
ze kunnen al vanaf het begin van de oorlog helikopters uit de lucht schieten

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Op vrijdag 9 februari 2007 21:06 schreef Monidique het volgende:

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Dat is waar, maar nu zijn er minder dan drie weken tijd zes helikopters neergehaald.

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Op vrijdag 9 februari 2007 21:11 schreef Monidique het volgende:
Het schijnt dat ze met geweervuur zijn neergehaald, dus dan zijn het geen nieuwe raketten, of iets dergelijks. Er kan meer worden gevlogen, maar de opstandelingen kunnen ook andere taktieken gebruiken, of het is gewoon toeval. Ik las wel dat er geruchten zijn dat ze wel verbeterde raketten hebben, maar ja, wat moet je geloven?