Ghosts of Battles in Iraq's Triangle of Death

Our trip out of the city took us into the area once known as the Triangle of Death, a swath of farmland between three towns south of Baghdad. The area took its name from the fierce insurgency and terrain that favors the guerrilla fighter. Soft dirt roads were often riddled with buried bombs and after launching their attacks, insurgents could escape into the canal systems that punctuate seemingly flat fields.

Soon after the city receded into the dusty but green land, I began counting the palm groves and the highway overpasses from the area I patrolled in 2006. After the third overpass, I saw the landmark I was looking for — the short bridge over a canal that was the site where I was first ambushed.

My welcome to combat came during the very first patrol I led on my own. On a cold January night, I was in charge of a section of two Bradley fighting vehicles guarding the highway. We crossed over the canal bridge and suddenly drove into a wall of machine gun fire. I ordered my driver to push forward to get a better angle on the attackers when an insurgent peeked over a mound of dirt and fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the back of my Bradley.

The rocket skimmed the back of the vehicle and exploded into the wall of a nearby Iraqi army compound. The entire fight lasted less than two minutes: they shot at us; we shot at them. They ducked into the canal system and we were powerless to chase them. When I returned to the base the following morning, I wrote in my journal that Teddy Roosevelt, whose biography I had recently finished, would have considered it a rather sporty engagement.

Over the next few months, that gun battle fell away in our memory as larger and deadlier ones took its place. But for all of our dangers, nothing we saw was as bad as what we heard coming out of Mahmudiya. Our friends who patrolled the volatile city told horror stories of driving down roads and hitting a roadside bomb. As they rushed to evacuate the casualties, they hit several more bombs planted behind them as they worked to save their wounded.

One of the grizzliest stories I heard from the place came after two soldiers from the 101st Airborne were captured outside of the city. When their bodies were discovered lashed against a tree, one of my best friends led a unit of engineers to clear the road to their remains. His platoon had to fight their way through multiple burried bombs, then dismantle a booby trap that had been rigged on the soldiers' mangled bodies.

Now, as Bobby Ghosh and I drove through the final checkpoint into Mahmudiya, my first thought was that I knew quite a few people that had died here. An hour later, the head of Mahmudiya's city council told us that, for all of the city's problems — lack of water, high unemployment — the security situation was relatively stable. He insisted that there have been few attacks in recent months and that Mahmudiya had come a long way from its tortured past.

From the council office, we embarked on what passes for an embed with the Iraqi army. Our small group strolled through a market that was teeming with merchants selling furniture, trinkets and WWE wrestling cards as Iraqi soldiers secured our way. We didn't stay long. As patrols go, it may have been the shortest of my career, but given the history of the place, perhaps that is a good thing.

Source : www.time.com

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Kyrgyz army took part in ethnic violence of June

Human Rights Watch makes accusation after hundreds of eyewitness accounts, photos and even videos from the satellite. Armoured army vehicles swept away the Uzbek barricades and left open the field for attack. The demand for an international inquiry.

Bishkek (AsiaNews / HRW) – Some army forces facilitated the massacre of ethnic Uzbeks, when violence erupted in June 2010 in southern Kyrgyzstan, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has denounced in a report published this week. The group also accuses the government of not having carried out detailed investigations on the responsibility for the violence. The report gathered more than 200 eyewitness accounts, statements of pro-rights and law enforcement groups, images and photographs taken by satellites, pictures and video footage.

HRW said the violence erupted on June 10 when a large group of ethnic Uzbeks gathered as a result of small clashes between the two ethnic groups. During the night there were several violent attacks and burning of houses of ethnic Kyrgyz in Osh and nearby villages. From early morning of June 11 until June 14 Kyrgyz attacked and burnt shops and houses in Uzbek districts of Osh, Jalalabad Bazar-Kurgan and other southern cities, in some cases levelling entire neighbourhoods. The official toll speaks of at least 371 deaths and thousands of homes destroyed, but many believe that the dead number more than 1000.

According to testimonies gathered by HRW, armoured military vehicles with camouflaged army men removed the barricades erected by ethnic Uzbeks, so that the mob was able to penetrate the Uzbek neighbourhoods. Other witnesses saw armed men following the armoured vehicles and firing against those who resisted, only to then step aside while a mob attacked and burned the houses. In other cases, there is evidence that the army disarmed the ethnic Uzbeks, while protecting the Kyrgyz assault.

This evidence contrasts with statements of authorities that ethnic Kyrgyz had stolen some armoured vehicles. Now HRW is calling on the Government to make more detailed investigations into those tragic days and the army’s role, which does not appear to have protected the neighbourhoods of ethnic Uzbeks from aggression.

The report also found numerous violations of law by the army, which in the days after the massacres insulted and beat residents, made illegal arrests and searches in areas of ethnic Uzbeks. In the village of Nariman security forces wounded 39 people, with 2 deaths. HRW reports at least 60 cases of torture against detainees, particularly ethnic Uzbeks, to obtain "confessions", with at least one prisoner who died.

Ole Solvang, co-author of the HRW report says that "It’s clear that the massive ethnic violence posed colossal challenges for Kyrgyz security forces. Yet we found that some of the security forces became part of the problem rather than the solution”.

"Now - Solvang continues - national and international inquiries need to find out just what the government forces did and whether the authorities did everything they could to protect people. This is crucial both for justice and to learn lessons about how to respond to any new outbreaks”.

Meanwhile, HRW demands that " abuses against detainees immediately cease." " The June violence has left deep scars" - Solvang concludes - "For those scars to heal there needs to be justice for what happened and equal protection for all ethnic communities "

Source : www.asianews.it

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Children and the ravages of war

interview with Kristin Barstad, ICRC child protection adviser

To mark the 20th, 50th and 60th anniversaries of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Declaration of the Rights of the Child and the Geneva Conventions, respectively, the ICRC has issued a new brochure on children and war. ICRC child protection adviser, Kristin Barstad, talks about the plight of children during war and what the organization does to protect and assist them
What makes children in war particularly vulnerable and at high risk?

War makes everybody potentially vulnerable. Although children show incredible strength and resilience, their young age makes them more vulnerable than adults. War exposes children to a whole host of risks – some of them unimaginable. The most obvious ones include the risk of orphanage, death, injury, displacement or separation from family. Losing access to health services also puts children at great risk as this can mean death or long-term effects following a simple injury or illness that has not been or cannot be cured.

A child without adult care is at risk of neglect and all kinds of abuse. For example, children may become easy targets for armed groups or forces looking for new recruits. They may be at risk of being trafficked. Additionally, armed conflict brings about general destitution that leaves many children with no choice but to take to the streets, begging or doing odd jobs – often very hard and underpaid – simply to survive. Of course, the risks differ depending on the age and sex of the child. Older children are more likely to survive on their own, but often face greater risks of abuse.

What specific needs do children in war have, compared to women, men or elderly people?

The specific needs of children depend on their age. However, children are all developing individuals in need of sufficient food, water and adequate health services. Vaccination is particularly important. While this is obviously important for adults as well, the lack of sufficient or adequate food, for example, can be detrimental to the physical and mental development of a young person.

Children need the protection and support of their families, in peacetime and in wartime. They also have the right to education, and, in many situations, access to education offers children a degree of protection and the life skills that are important in a situation of conflict and destitution. That said, being at school may actually expose children to additional risks. Schools are sometimes attacked directly, and may be targeted by armed groups or forces looking for new recruits.

Children who have been separated from their families during conflict need their parents back. They must, therefore, be given the opportunity to search for their parents and be reunited with them. While efforts are made to trace their families, these very vulnerable children need access to shelter, food, water and other basic services – in addition, of course, to support and protection provided by an adult.

How does the ICRC respond to these specific needs?

Children caught up in war are a priority for the ICRC and, naturally, they benefit from almost all our programmes. A number of ICRC programmes are tailored to the needs of children.

I cannot think of anything as traumatizing as being separated from your parents at a young age, not knowing where they are and being deprived of their protection in the hostile environment of war. In situations where families have been torn apart, the ICRC, therefore, places high priority on tracing and reuniting family members. While we provide this service to all family members who have been separated, we give priority to children who are unaccompanied or separated from their families.

In 2008, the ICRC registered close to 2,000 children separated from their families worldwide. This figure includes 347 children released by armed forces or armed groups. We did this in close collaboration with the national Red Cross or Red Crescent societies.

As guardian of international humanitarian law (IHL), the ICRC is naturally concerned about the issue of child recruitment by armed forces and armed groups. We try to fight this phenomenon in several ways. Firstly, we put a lot of emphasis on preventing recruitment in the first place. This is done by working directly, not only with those recruiting children, but also with the children and their communities.

Secondly, the ICRC helps develop the legal standards that regulate this phenomenon, and raises awareness of them among armed forces, armed groups and the civilian population.

Thirdly, when it is in the interest of the children who have been recruited, the ICRC intervenes with armed groups or forces in question, asking them to release children in their ranks and return them to their families.

Fourthly, the ICRC is heavily involved in reuniting demobilized children with their families. This, for example, is the case in Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Sudan.

Children unfortunately also become victims of atrocities such as sexual violence. The ICRC has adopted a multidisciplinary response to the devastating effects of sexual violence. It provides the victims with timely medical and psychosocial support, and where necessary, helps meet their economic needs. At the same time, the ICRC raises awareness to such violence, works to help prevent it and protect children from it.

During its detention visits, the ICRC often comes across children. We always pay particular attention to their situation, remind the authorities of the children’s rights, if necessary, and give the children the opportunity to maintain contact with their families. As with adults, the ICRC provides children with specific assistance if the detaining authorities are unable to do so.

What does IHL say about the protection of children in war?

The protection of children in wartime is enshrined in international humanitarian law, which is binding for both States and non-governmental armed groups. As civilians, children are protected under IHL in two different situations. Firstly, if they fall into the hands of enemy forces they must be protected against any form of abuse. Secondly, civilians not taking part in hostilities must in no circumstances be the target of attacks. Given the particular vulnerability of children, the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocols of 1977 lay down a series of rules according them special protection. No fewer than 25 articles in the Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols specifically mention children.

Human rights laws also contain specific provisions on the protection of children against the effects of armed conflict. This is true of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and its Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict.

Parties to a conflict must respect IHL and children's rights. Fighting must not take place in the midst of civilians. War can be conducted without violating the fundamental rights of the civilian population! Those who do not respect IHL must be held accountable so that they see that violating law has consequences.

Humanitarian agencies must be given unhindered access to the civilian population – including children - in order to bring the humanitarian assistance needed.

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2010: U.S. To Wage War Throughout The World

by : Rick Rozoff.

January 1 will usher in the last year of the first decade of a new millennium and ten consecutive years of the United States conducting war in the Greater Middle East.

Beginning with the October 7, 2001 missile and bomb attacks on Afghanistan, American combat operations abroad have not ceased for a year, a month, a week or a day in the 21st century.

The Afghan war, the U.S.'s first air and ground conflict in Asia since the disastrous wars in Vietnam and Cambodia in the 1960s and early 1970s and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's first land war and Asian campaign, began during the end of the 2001 war in Macedonia launched from NATO-occupied Kosovo, one in which the role of U.S. military personnel is still to be properly exposed [1] and addressed and which led to the displacement of almost 10 percent of the nation's population.

In the first case Washington invaded a nation in the name of combating terrorism; in the second it abetted cross-border terrorism. Similarly, in 1991 the U.S. and its Western allies attacked Iraqi forces in Kuwait and launched devastating and deadly cruise missile attacks and bombing sorties inside Iraq in the name of preserving the national sovereignty and territorial integrity of Kuwait, and in 1999 waged a 78-day bombing assault against Yugoslavia to override and fatally undermine the principles of territorial integrity and national sovereignty in the name of the casus belli of the day, so-called humanitarian intervention.

Two years later humanitarian war, as abhorrent an oxymoron as the world has ever witnessed, gave way to the global war on terror(ism), with the U.S. and its NATO allies again reversing course but continuing to wage wars of aggression and "wars of opportunity" as they saw fit, contradictions and logic, precedents and international law notwithstanding.

Several never fully acknowledged counterinsurgency campaigns, some ongoing - Colombia - and some new - Yemen - later, the U.S. invaded Iraq in March of 2003 with a "coalition of the willing" comprised mainly of Eastern European NATO candidate nations (now almost all full members of the world's only military bloc as a result of their service).

The Pentagon has also deployed special forces and other troops to the Philippines and launched naval, helicopter and missile attacks inside Somalia as well as assisting the Ethiopian invasion of that nation in 2006. Washington also arms, trains and supports the armed forces of Djibouti in their border war with Eritrea. In fact Djibouti hosts the U.S.'s only permanent military installation in Africa to date [2], Camp Lemonier, a United States Naval Expeditionary Base and home to the Combined Joint Task Force - Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA), placed under the new U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) when it was launched on October 1, 2008. The area of responsibility of the Combined Joint Task Force - Horn of Africa takes in the nations of Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Seychelles, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Yemen and as "areas of interest" the Comoros, Mauritius and Madagascar.

That is, much of the western shores of the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean, among the most geostrategically important parts of the world. [3]

U.S. troops, aerial drones, warships, planes and helicopters are active throughout that vast tract of land and water.

With senator and once almost vice president Joseph Lieberman's threat on December 27 that "Yemen will be tomorrow's war" [4] and former Southern Command chief and NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe Wesley Clark's two days later that "Maybe we need to put some boots on the ground there," [5] it is evident that America's new war for the new year has already been identified. In fact in mid-December U.S. warplanes participated in the bombing of a village in northern Yemen that cost the lives of 120 civilians as well as wounding 44 more [6] and a week later "A US fighter jet...carried out multiple airstrikes on the home of a senior official in Yemen's northern rugged province of Sa'ada...." [7]

The pretext for undertaking a war in Yemen in earnest is currently the serio-comic "attempted terrorist attack” by a young Nigerian national on a passenger airliner outside of Detroit on Christmas Day. The deadly U.S. bombing of the Yemeni village mentioned above occurred ten days earlier and moreover was in the north of the nation, although Washington claims al-Qaeda cells are operating in the other end of the country. [8]

Asia, Africa and the Middle East are not the only battlegrounds where the Pentagon is active. On October 30 of 2009 the U.S. signed an agreement with the government of Colombia to acquire the essentially unlimited and unrestricted use of seven new military bases in the South American nation, including sites within immediate striking distance of both Venezuela and Ecuador. [9] American intelligence, special forces and other personnel will be complicit in ongoing counterinsurgency operations against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in the nation's south as well as in rendering assistance to Washington's Colombian proxy for attacks inside Ecuador and Venezuela that will be portrayed as aimed at FARC forces in the two states.

Targeting two linchpins of and ultimately the entire Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), Washington is laying the groundwork for a potential military conflagration in South and Central America and the Caribbean. After the U.S.-supported coup in Honduras on June 28, that nation has announced it will be the first ALBA member state to ever withdraw from the Alliance and the Pentagon will retain, perhaps expand, its military presence at the Soto Cano Air Base there.

A few days ago "The Colombian government...announced it is building a new military base on its border with Venezuela and has activated six new airborne battalions" [10] and shortly afterward Dutch member of parliament Harry van Bommel "claimed that US spy planes are using an airbase on the Netherlands Antilles island of Curaçao" [11] off the Venezuelan coast.

In October a U.S. armed forces publication revealed that the Pentagon will spend $110 million to modernize and expand seven new military bases in Bulgaria and Romania, across the Black Sea from Russia, where it will station initial contingents of over 4,000 troops. [12]

In early December the U.S. signed a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with Poland, which borders the Russian Kaliningrad territory, that "allows for the United States military to station American troops and military equipment on Polish territory." [13] The U.S. military forces will operate Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) and Standard Missile 3 (SM-3) batteries as part of the Pentagon's global interceptor missile system.

At approximately the same time President Obama pressured Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to base missile shield components in his country. "We discussed the continuing role that we can play as NATO allies in strengthening Turkey's profile within NATO and coordinating more effectively on critical issues like missile defense," [14] in the American leader's words.

"Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has hinted his government does not view Tehran [Iran] as a potential missile threat for Turkey at this point. But analysts say if a joint NATO missile shield is developed, such a move could force Ankara to join the mechanism." [15]

2010 will see the first foreign troops deployed to Poland since the breakup of the Warsaw Pact in 1991 and the installation of the U.S's "stronger, swifter and smarter" (also Obama's words) interceptor missiles and radar facilities in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and the South Caucasus. [16]

U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan, site of the longest and most wide-scale war in the world, will top 100,000 early in 2010 and with another 50,000 plus troops from other NATO nations and assorted "vassals and tributaries" (Zbigniew Brzezinski) will represent the largest military deployment in any war zone in the world.

American and NATO drone missile and helicopter gunship attacks in Pakistan will also increase, as will U.S. counterinsurgency operations in the Philippines and Somalia along with those in Yemen where CIA and Army special forces are already involved.

U.S. military websites recently announced that there have been 3.3 million deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001 with 2 million U.S. service members sent to the two war zones. [17]

In this still young millennium American soldiers have also deployed in the hundreds of thousands to new bases and conflict and post-conflict zones in Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Colombia, Djibouti, Georgia, Israel, Jordan, Kosovo, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Mali, the Philippines, Romania, Uganda and Uzbekistan.

In 2010 they will be sent abroad in even larger numbers to man airbases and missile sites, supervise and participate in counterinsurgency operations throughout the world against disparate rebel groups, many of them secular, and wage combat operations in South Asia and elsewhere. They will be stationed on warships and submarines equipped with cruise and long-range nuclear missiles and with aircraft carrier strike groups prowling the world's seas and oceans.

They will construct and expand bases from Europe to Central and South Asia, Africa to South America, the Middle East to Oceania. With the exception of Guam and Vicenza in Italy, where the Pentagon is massively expanding existing installations, all the facilities in question are in nations and even regions of the world where the U.S. military has never before ensconced itself. Practically all the new encampments will be forward bases used for operations "down range," generally to the east and south of NATO-dominated Europe.

U.S. military personnel will be assigned to the new Global Strike Command and for expanded patrols and war games in the Arctic Circle. They will serve under the Missile Defense Agency to consolidate a worldwide interceptor missile network that will facilitate a nuclear first strike capability and will extend that system into space, the final frontier in the drive to achieve military full spectrum dominance.

American troops will continue to fan out to most all parts of the world. Everywhere, that is, except to their own nation's borders.

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