al-maliki sacked police commander in Karbala City in their clash with al-mahdi army

BAGHDAD, Aug 29 (KUNA) — Angered by Tuesday’s clashes between policemen of Karbala City and the Shiite militia of Al-Mahdi’s Army, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki decided Wednesday to sack commander of police operations’ center Major General Saleh Khazal Al-Maliki and run the center by himself.

He also fired 1,500 other police officers. Al-Maliki’s decree sacking the police chief and other police officers was meant to blame them of professional incompetence, Spokesman of Iraqi Ministry of Defense Staff Major General Mohammad Al-Askari told KUNA here.

The Prime Minister visited the embattled city earlier in the day to defuse the two-day riots and chaos among Iraqis during religious Shiite rites. Soon after his arrival in Karbala, Al-Maliki convened with Minister of Defense Mohammad Abdul-Qader Al-Ubaidi and National Security Advisor Mowaffaq Al-Rubaiei as well as local military and civilian leaders.

He imposed a curfew as of Wednesday morning pending further notice and ordered the arrest of anyone who breaks his instructions.

Al-Maliki held “criminal gangs” and “remnants of Al-Baath Party” responsible for the riots and attacks against visitors of the holy city.  He vowed to track down the perpetrators and culprits of the riots that left 55 dead and some 300 others injured.

The malicious design targeting the stability in the holy city and the safety of its citizens was aborted, the prime minister asserted, adding that the situation was brought under full control of the security forces after the arrival of military backup.  The militants targeted to occupy the two holy shrines and topple Al-Maliki’s government, Al-Rubaiei said.

Commandoes took part in normalizing the situation in the southern Iraqi city, he added.

However, local sources told KUNA two secretaries of the Shiite cleric Al-Sistani; Sheikh Abdul-Mahdi Al-Karbalaei and Ahmad Al-Safi were still seized in areas adjacent to the two holy shrines of the city which are under full control of Al-Mahdi Army.
Meanwhile, four Iraqi civilians were killed and eight others wounded when a car bomb went off in the northern city of Kirkuk Wednesday evening.  The attack targeted the convoy of Colonel Anwar Qader, chief of Al-Domiz police station, downtown Kirkuk.
An Iraqi civilian was gunned down by unknown militants in another attack in Kirkuk.

A policeman was injured in a bomb attack perpetrated by Al-Qaeda Organization in Iraq in the same city.

ethnic cleansing and iraq

Growing Needs Amid Continuing Displacement

http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/iraq?page=intro

Incessant violence across much of Iraq’s central and southern regions has forced tens of thousands of people to leave their homes every month, presenting the international community with a humanitarian crisis even larger than the upheaval aid agencies had planned for during the 2003 war.

UNHCR estimates that more than 4.2 million Iraqis have left their homes. Of these, some 2.2 million Iraqis are displaced internally, while more than 2 million have fled to neighbouring states, particularly Syria and Jordan. Many were displaced prior to 2003, but an increasing number are fleeing now. In 2006, Iraqis had become the leading nationality seeking asylum in Europe.

Much of UNHCR’s work in Iraq since the fall in 2003 of the Saddam Hussein regime was based on the assumption that the domestic situation would stabilize and hundreds of thousands of previously displaced Iraqis would soon be able to go home. In 2006, however, spiralling violence led to increasing displacement, necessitating a reassessment of UNHCR’s work and its priorities throughout the region – from assisting returns and aiding some 50,000 non-Iraqi refugees in Iraq, to providing more help to the thousands who are fleeing every month.

Between 2003 and 2005, some 300,000 Iraqis did return home, including from Iran, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Jordan and other countries. Now, however, the returns have stopped and many more people are fleeing, including large numbers of skilled professionals crucial to Iraq’s recovery.

In addition to those outside the country, more than 1 million Iraqis have fled their homes for other areas inside Iraq since early 2006, most of them following sectarian violence sparked by the bombing of an important Shia mosque in the central Iraqi city of Samarra in February of that year.

The displacement in Iraq is presenting an enormous humanitarian challenge and extreme hardship for both the displaced and the Iraqi families trying to help them in host communities. The enormous scale of the needs, the violence and the difficulties in reaching the displaced make it a problem that is practically beyond the capacity of humanitarian agencies, including UNHCR. And the longer it goes on, the more difficult it gets as both the internally displaced and their host communities in Iraq run out of resources.

Many uprooted Iraqis fleeing to surrounding countries do not initially seek UNHCR help, but rely instead on a social net of friends and relatives which UNHCR worries is rapidly wearing thin, bringing rising social problems among the exiles and occasional friction with host communities.

Since the beginning of 2007, UNHCR has expanded its operations in the region and now has some 300 staff working on the Iraq crisis from offices in the region and in Geneva. The UN refugee agency has registered more than 180,000 Iraqis in countries neighbouring Iraq, 15 percent of whom are in need of special assistance. These include victims of torture. In April 2007, the agency held a major international conference in Geneva to address the humanitarian needs of those displaced by the Iraq conflict and seek more international help for them.

UNHCR is providing support to host countries by rehabilitating and constructing schools, clinics and community centres and through the provision of counselling and special care for the most vulnerable. By mid-August 2007, UNHCR had referred some 12,000 cases of the most vulnerable Iraqis for resettlement in third countries.

The UN refugee agency, which has appealed for US$223 million for its Iraq operations in 2007, is also concerned about the welfare of an estimated 15,000 Palestinian refugees in Iraq, including 1,500 stranded in two makeshift camps at the Iraq-Syria border. The Palestinians in Baghdad face threats on a daily basis but cannot leave Iraq. The country’s Christians and other minority communities are also under threat.

****************Compare that [appeal for $223 million — which says nothing about how much they actually have had to work with so far] with this sentence from the NY Times:

“Israel and the United States signed a deal on Thursday to give Israel $30 billion in military aid over the next decade in what officials called a long-term investment in peace.”

*******

And here:http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/home/opendoc.pdf?tbl=SUBSITES&id=461f7cb92

You can find a graph with stats on Iraqi refugees in other countries.  The U.S. has 6,000 or so.  That’s of an estimated 4 million that are displaced.

Arab female professionals finish US State Department-sponsored course

WASHINGTON, Aug 29 (KUNA) — Thirty-six young female lawyers and businesswomen selected from different parts of the Middle East and North Africa completed on Wednesday a six-month US business and legal fellowship program as part of the US Administrations Middle East Peace Initiative (MEPI). The women in the Legal and Business Fellowship Program (LBFP) were selected out of 1,000 applicants based on work experience and TOEFL scores, from Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, the Palestinian Territories, and Yemen.      The State Department started the annual LBFP program in 2002, shortly after President George Bush announced the launch of the MEPI. The MEPI, launched shortly after the September 11 attacks, is designed to promote democracy throughout the Middle East.      “This is our diplomatic way with partner Arab countries to help them achieve their areas of reform (in women’s rights)” said Ross Kaplan, foreign affairs office at the State Department.      In separate interviews, the participants said they had little cultural shock when coming to the US because of exposure to American media in the region, but found Americans had little understanding or exposure to the Middle East. Mai Noman, a Yemeni citizen living in Kuwait, said she found many Americans had no perceptions of Arabs.      “We did seven presentations about the Arab world to different companies and schools just to give them our perspective of the region.” She told KUNA that most of the feedback she received was positive, adding “if it is not all positive at least it is realistic”. Noman said, though the program was challenging, it was an eye-opening experience, noting similarities between the US and the Arab world.      Other participants said many Americans were quick to ask questions and curious to learn about the Arab culture. After arriving in mid-March they attended a four-week seminar at the University of Pennsylvania and then spent a five month internship in various cities across the country, including Washington DC, Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Chicago, and San Jose.

what the hell is moqtada sadr really doing? and what does it matter…….A LOT

Version 1	Version 2
Sadr set to ‘rebuild’ Mehdi Army Wed Aug 29 12:50:34 UTC 2007	Sadr ‘freezes’ militia activities Wed Aug 29 14:20:26 UTC 2007
The radical Iraqi Shia cleric, Moqtada Sadr, has announced the “rebuilding” of his Mehdi Army militia over a maximum period of six months.	Radical Iraqi Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr says he is freezing the activities of his Mehdi Army militia for up to six months in order to re-organise it.
He called on all its offices to co-operate with the security forces and exercise “self-control”, in a statement issued by his office in Najaf.	He also called on all its offices to co-operate with the security forces and exercise “self-control”, in a statement issued by his office in Najaf.
The order was read out at a conference in Karbala, where fierce fighting on Tuesday killed more than 50 people.	The order was read out at a conference in Karbala, where fierce fighting on Tuesday killed more than 50 people.
Police blamed the Mehdi Army for the violence, but it denied involvement.	Police blamed the Mehdi Army for the violence, but it denied involvement.
The militia is strongly opposed to the US presence in Iraq and took part in two uprisings against US-led forces in 2004.	A curfew is now in force in the holy city, where the situation is said to be calm.
It has also been linked to many sectarian attacks on Iraq’s Sunni Arabs and on UK forces in the south of the country.	‘Rehabilitation’
	At a news conference in Karbala on Wednesday, one of Moqtada Sadr’s aides read out a statement announcing that the Mehdi Army had suspended all its activities.
	[The order] also includes suspending the taking up of arms against occupiers as well as others Ahmed al-Shaibani Spokesman for Moqtada Sadr What is the Mehdi Army?
	“We declare the freezing of the Mehdi Army without exception in order to rehabilitate it in a way that will safeguard its ideological image within a maximum period of six months starting from the day this statement is issued,” Sheikh Hazim al-Araji said.
	In Najaf, another spokesman said the order included “suspending the taking up of arms against occupiers, as well as others”.
	Reports say the move is part of an attempt by Moqtada Sadr to regain control over his militia, which has split in recent months into increasingly autonomous factions, some of which the US says are trained and armed by Iran.
	However, the BBC’s Mike Wooldridge in Baghdad says past experience of attempted purges of rogue elements in the militia will doubtless lead US and UK commanders to be wary and watch for the effect of the order on the ground.
	‘Dangerous accelerant’
	The Mehdi Army was created by Moqtada Sadr in the summer of 2003 to protect the Shia religious authorities in the holy city of Najaf.