East Turkestan

Watch:
Ms. Rebiya Kadeer (Rabiye Qadir), the leader of Uighur National Movement and the Spiritual Mother of Uyghur people, as the president of the WUC.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caq_sBChfCg

Geography

East Turkestan covers 1.65 million square kilometers. According to official records, the original territory of East Turkestan was 1.82 million square kilometers. The neighbouring Chinese annexed part of the territory as a result of the communist invasion of 1949.East Turkestan borders with Mongolia to the east, Russia to the north, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikstan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India to the west, and Tibet to the south.

People

Current Issues

Forbidden traditions: Pursuant to Article 4 of the Chinese Constitution, Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities should theoretically enjoy the right to “use and develop their own spoken and written languages, and to preserve or reform their own ways and customs”. This provision is reiterated in the famed – and yet-to-be-applied – 1984 Regional Ethnic Autonomy Law (Art. 10). Yet Uyghurs are not allowed to celebrate their Newruz (Uyghur new year) and traditional Meshreps (cultural festivals) have been outlawed in 1994.

Endangered language: Uyghur language (a Turkic language closely related to Uzbek) is taught as a second language in primary and secondary schools but scarcely used as Uyghurs are forced to use Chinese. According to the Human Rights Council resolution 60/251 from the UN General Assemble of June 2006, 70% of schools in East Turkestan are taught in Chinese.

Uyghur was also used as a language of instruction at Xinjiang University until 2002 when the government decided that the majority of courses should be in Chinese. The destruction of thousands of Uyghur books by Chinese authorities is another illustration of an intention to undermine Uyghur culture (Uyghur Language and Culture under Threat in Xinjiang, Michael Dillon, Central Asia-Caucasus Institute Analyst, 14 August 2002). Moreover, the aforementioned restrictions upon religious practice also have a direct impact on the transmission of the Uyghur cultural heritage.

Religion under control: In China, Imams, Lamas and Catholic clerics are ‘approved’ by Chinese authorities. A majority of Uyghurs are Muslims. Despite the provisions of article 36 of the Chinese constitution granting freedom of religion to all Chinese citizens, religious manifestations are strictly controlled. In his report after a visit to China in 1994, the United Nations Special Rapporteur of Freedom of Religion underlined the fact that the right to manifest one’s beliefs was not guaranteed there. Since 1994, despite numerous requests, the new Rapporteur has not been granted a visa to China.

University students are openly forbidden to fast during the month of Ramadan or to show any pious behaviour (Human Rights Watch report on Xinjiang, Oct. 2001). The content of the Friday sermon is kept under strict scrutiny by Chinese authorities who validate all quotes and interpretations of the Quran in advance. The authorities decide upon the legitimacy of religious groups, taking into account various criteria, among which: July 2005, the Xinjiang’s Yili Autonomous Prefecture decided to ban the Sala Sufi branch of Islam and detained and fined 179 followers (Human Rights Watch, China: A Year After New Regulations, Religious Rights Still Restricted, 01 March 2006).

Hajj ban: Until this summer, Chinese Muslims over 40 were eligible to apply for passports to go on the Hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca, one of the five fundamental duties for all Muslims) but in June 2007, all passports were confiscated and Xinjiang authorities announced that only a small delegation of selected Muslims would be allowed to go to Mecca (Human Rights Watch, China: A Year After New Regulations, Religious Rights Still Restricted, 01 March 2006).

Pursuant to the 2004 Regulations on Religious Affairs, overseas pilgrimages to Mecca require a state authorization (Art. 43) and must be organized by the state-monitored national religious body of Islam (Art. 11).

Marked as ‘Terrorists’: The terrorist attack on the Twin Towers in New York and the "War on Terror" allowed the Chinese Government to start a heavy crackdown on the Uygur religion and basic freedoms under the guise that the Uygur harbour terrorist organizations. In the 2004 Amnesty International Report this is confirmed. The PRC’s change in public rhetoric about East Turkestan after 9/11 and detail the crackdowns that have led to arbitrary arrests, torture, and executions, as the PRC government has used ‘anti-terrorism’ policies to suppress all forms of Uyghur protest, no matter how peaceful.

A section of the report illuminates how authorities have targeted Uyghur intellectuals as part of their strategy to silence dissent. The cases of Uyhjur-Canadian Huseyin Celil and the attacks on the prominent Uyghur leader and human rights activis Rebiya Kadeer’s family illustrate how the PRC’d intimidation tactics extend beyond its own borders.

Environmental problems: The environmental problems were partly caused by the mass migrations of Chinese into East Turkestan. Since the population of East Turkestan had suddenly increased, the region began to face a serious water shortage. The solution that the Chinese government put into practice – the diversion of the main river system for the irrigation of the upstream areas of new settlers — turned into an ecological disaster in the whole territory, which resulted in the desertification of farms.

Despite the fierce protests of the Uyghur’s, the Chinese Communist leaders continue to order nuclear testing at Lop Nor in East Turkestan that has for three decades produced an ecological disaster endangering human life, polluting drinking water and food supplies and affecting millions of animals. According to a report released by the Registry of the Peoples Hospital of Urumchi in 1993, the rate of fatal cancer was at least 70 per day, out of an average 1,500 daily sick visits in this hospital.

Population

East Turkestan is the homeland of the Turkic speaking Uyghurs and other Central Asian peoples such as the Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Uzbeks, Tatars and Tajiks. According to latest Chinese census, the current population of East Turkestan is 18.62 million, including 7.49 million ethnic Chinese settled in East Turkestan after 1949 (the ethnic Chinese numbered 200,000 in 1949). The population of Muslims is slightly over 11 million, with 8.68 million of them being Uyghur.

However, the Uyghur sources put the population of Uyghurs around 15 to 20 million.

Language

Uyghur is an ancient language with more than 15 million speakers by Uyghur estimates and more than 8.6 million speakers by Chinese estimates. Uyghur belongs to the Turkic branch of the Ural-Altaic family of languages. It is closely related to the languages of the Turkish, Azeri, Uzbek, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Turkmen, Tartar, Bashkurt, Chuvash, Yakutsk and other Turkic dialects.Uyghur has used several alphabets throughout its history, including forms of the Sogdian, Arabic, Latin, and Cyrillic script, with regional variations. Since 1985, the Arabic script was reinstated as the official script. There is, of course, a great difference between the old Uyghur and the present one

History

Contacts between Uyghurs and Muslims started at the beginning of 9th century and conversion to Islam soon followed. The city of Kashgar quickly became one of the major learning centers of Islam. Art, sciences, music and literature flourished as Islamic religious institutions nurtured the pursuit of an advanced culture. In this period, hundreds of world-renowned Uyghur scholars emerged.

The Manchu Invasion:

The independent Uyghur Kingdom in East Turkestan was invaded by the Manchu rulers of China in 1759 and East Turkestan was annexed to the Manchu Empire. The Uyghurs regularly revolted against the occupation but only achieved independence for 12 years (1864-1876). Chinese Nationalist Rule in East Turkestan:In 1911, the Nationalist Chinese overthrew Manchu rule and established a republic. The Uyghurs, who wanted to free themselves from foreign domination, staged several uprisings against the Nationalist Chinese rule during this period.

Twice, in 1933 and 1944, the Uyghurs were successful in setting up an independent East Turkestan Republic. But Nationalist forces each time managed to reestablish control Isa Yusuf Alptekin served in the government of the short-lived East Turkestan Republic in the 1940s and fled to Turkey when the Republic was crushed in a joint operation by Mao and Stalin. He kept the mindset of a diplomat and in a famous incident in 1981 played host to a delegation from the Chinese Embassy in Ankara. Isa Yusuf Alptekin died in 1995 at age 94.

Communist Rule:

In 1949, the Nationalist Chinese were defeated by the Communists. As a consequence, East Turkestan fell under Chinese Communist rule. Ever since then, the Uyghurs have been discriminated against by the Chinese Administration in all walks of life. The Uyghurs were denied representation in their own country. In the 1950s and 1960s, the central government encouraged significant numbers of ethnic Han Chinese to settle in Xinjiang to ‘dilute’ the Uyghur population and increase Beijing’s control. In the 1970s, freedoms were gradually re-introduced after the Cultural Revolution. Mosques were re-built and the Uyghurs were allowed greater freedom of movement.

In the 1990s, after the independence of the Turkic Republics of the former Soviet Union, the Turkic peoples of Xinjiang, particularly the Uyghur’s, grew increasingly discontented with Chinese rule, the economic disparity between themselves and the Han-Chinese and the marginalization of Uyghur culture. CultureAt the end of the 19th and the first few decades of the 20th century, scientific and archaeological expeditions to the region along the Silk Road in East Turkestan led to the discovery of numerous Uyghur cave temples, monastery ruins, wall paintings, statues, frescoes, valuable manuscripts, documents and books.

The manuscripts, documents and books discovered in East Turkestan proved that the Uyghur’s had a very high degree of civilization. The first Uyghur literary works were mostly translations of Buddhist and Manicheist religious books.

Religion

Prior to Islam, like most of the Turkic peoples in Central Asia, the Uyghur’s believed in religions like Shamanism, Buddhism and Manicheism. The Uyghur’s embraced Islam in 934, during the reign of Satuk Bughra Khan. He was the first Turkic ruler who embraced Islam in Central Asia. At this time, instead of temples, mosques were built. Almost 300 mosques were built only in the city of Kashgar. Most famous among them are the Azna Mosque, built in the 12th century, Idgah Mosque built in the 15h century, and Appak Khoja Mosque, built in the 18th century. In the city of Kashgar alone, there were 18 big Madrasas (mosque schools), and up to two-thousand students enrolled in these schools in any given year, these schools were one of the important facilities not only for teaching the Uyghur children reading, writing, and subjects Islamic in nature, but also such familiar subjects as mantik (logic), arithmatik (arithmetic), hendese (geometry), hai'a (ethics), astronomiye (astronomy), tibb (medicine), and falaha (agriculture). The Mesudi Library built in the 15th century, had a collection of almost 200,000 books.

Organizations

East Turkestan is represented in the UNPO by the World Uyghur Congress (WUC).

Introducing the World Uyghur Congress

The World Uyghur Congress (WUC) is an international organization that represents the collective interest of the Uyghur people both in East Turkestan and abroad. WUC was established on April 16, 2004 in Munich, Germany, after the East Turkestan National Congress and the World Uyghur Youth Congress merged into one united organization. The main objective of WUC is to promote the right of the Uyghur people to use peaceful, nonviolent, and democratic means to determine the political future of East Turkestan.

At the second General Assembly of the WUC, which was held in Munich from November 24 to 27, 2006, delegates elected Ms. Rebiya Kadeer (Rabiye Qadir), the leader of Uighur National Movement and the Spiritual Mother of Uyghur people, as the president of the WUC.

Before Rebiya Kadeer (Rabiye Qadir) was elected as the president of WUC, she founded the “Uighur Human Rights and Democracy Foundation” and headed “The Uighur American Association” based on Washington DC. She was also the winner of Rafto Prize and the nominee for 2005-2006-2007 Nobile Peace Prize. For 5 years she spent her life in a notorious Chinese prison. After her release, she has been exerting all her energy to fight for freedom, democracy and human rights for Uyghur people. For her great work she is entitled as “The Leader and The Spiritual Mother of Uighur’s”.

At the first General Assembly of WUC in 2004 Mr. Erkin Aliptekin was elected as a president. He had lead WUC to its second General Assembly in 2006. Mr. Alptekin is a former general secretary of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO) based in The Hague, the Netherlands. He has remarkable experience in working with international organizations and governments in lobbying for the Uyghur people’s right to self-determination.

He is also a close friend of the Dalai Lama, spiritual leader of the Tibetan people. WUC is a democratic organization. All of WUC leadership was democratically elected by the participants from all over the world in the General Assembly. They all serve a three-year term. WUC has close contacts and working relations with most Uyghur organizations in the world that peacefully promote the human rights, religious freedom, and democracy for the Uyghur people in East Turkestan.

Mission Statement

The main objective of the World Uyghur Congress is to promote democracy, human rights and freedom for the Uyghur people and use peaceful, nonviolent, and democratic means to determine their political future. By representing as the sole legitimate organization of the Uyghur people both in East Turkestan and abroad, WUC endeavors to set out a course for the peaceful settlement of the East Turkestan

Question through dialogue and negotiation.

The WUC declares a nonviolent and peaceful opposition movement against Chinese occupation of East Turkestan and an unconditional adherence to the international accepted human rights standard as laid down in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and adherence to the principals of democratic pluralism and rejection of totalitarianism, religious intolerance, and terrorism as an instrument of policy.

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'Beautiful Turkestan' see:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCDJPRwuNlU&feature=related

FUZULI, Muhammad bin Suleyman

Please see NY Turkmen Institute:

http://www.turkmeninstitute.org/

According to Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuz%C3%BBl%C3%AE



Fużūlī (فضولی) was the pen name of the poet Muhammad bin Suleyman (محمد بن سليمان) (c. 1483 – 1556). Often considered one of the greatest contributors to the Dîvân tradition of Turkish literature,[1] Fuzûlî in fact wrote his collected poems (dîvân) in three different languages: Azerbaijani Turkish, Persian, and Arabic. Although his Turkish works are written in Azerbaijani, he was well-versed in both the Ottoman and the Chagatai Turkish literary traditions as well. He was also well versed in mathematics and astronomy[2].



Fuzûlî is generally believed to have been born around 1483 in what is now Iraq, when the area was under Ak Koyunlu Turkmen rule; he was probably born in either Karbalā’ or an-Najaf.[3] His family was a part of the Bayat tribe, one of the Turkic Oghuz tribes who were related to the Ottoman Kayı clan and were scattered throughout the Middle East, Anatolia, and the Caucasus at the time. Though Fuzûlî's ancestors had been of nomadic origin, the family had long since settled in towns.

Fuzûlî appears to have received a good education, first under his father—who was a mufti in the city of Al Hillah—and then under a teacher named Rahmetullah.[4] It was during this time that he learned the Persian and Arabic languages in addition to his native Azerbaijani. Fuzûlî showed poetic promise early in life, composing sometime around his twentieth year the important mesnevî entitled Beng ü Bâde (بنگ و باده; "Hashish and Wine"), in which he compared the Ottoman sultan Bayezid II to hashish and the Safavid shah Ismail I to wine, much to the advantage of the latter.

One of the few things that is known of Fuzûlî's life during this time is how he arrived at his pen name. In the introduction to his collected Persian poems, he says: "In the early days when I was just beginning to write poetry, every few days I would set my heart on a particular pen name and then after a time change it for another because someone showed up who shared the same name".[5] Eventually, he decided upon the Arabic word fuzûlî—which literally means "impertinent, improper, unnecessary"—because he "knew that this title would not be acceptable to anyone else".[6] Despite the name's pejorative meaning, however, it contains a double meaning—what is called tevriyye (توريه) in Ottoman Divan poetry—as Fuzûlî himself explains: "I was possessed of all the arts and sciences and found a pen name that also implies this sense since in the dictionary fuzûl (ﻓﻀﻮل) is given as a plural of fazl (ﻓﻀﻞ; 'learning') and has the same rhythm as ‘ulûm (ﻋﻠﻮم; 'sciences') and fünûn (ﻓﻨﻮن; 'arts')".[7]

In 1534, the Ottoman sultan Süleymân I conquered the region of Baghdad, where Fuzûlî lived, from the Safavid Empire. Fuzûlî now had the chance to become a court poet under the Ottoman patronage system, and he composed a number of kasîdes, or panegyric poems, in praise of the sultan and members of his retinue, and as a result, he was granted a stipend. However, owing to the complexities of the Ottoman bureaucracy, this stipend never materialized. In one of his best-known works, the letter Şikâyetnâme (شکايت نامه; "Complaint"), Fuzûlî spoke out against such bureaucracy and its attendant corruption:

سلام وردم رشوت دگلدر ديو آلمادىلر
Selâm verdim rüşvet değildir deyü almadılar.[8]
I said hello, but they didn't accept as it wasn't a bribe.

Though his poetry flourished during his time among the Ottomans, the loss of his stipend meant that, materially speaking, Fuzûlî never became secure. In fact, most of his life was spent attending upon the Shi`ite Tomb of `Alî in the city of an-Najaf, south of Baghdad.[9] He died during a plague outbreak in 1556, in Karbalā’, either of the plague itself or of cholera.

Fuzûlî has always been known, first and foremost, as a poet of love. It was, in fact, a characterization that he seems to have agreed with:
مندن فضولی ايستمه اشعار مدح و ذم
من عاشقام هميشه سوزم عاشقانه در
Menden Fuzûlî isteme eş'âr-ı medh ü zem
Men âşıkam hemîşe sözüm âşıkânedür[10]

Don't ask Fuzûlî for poems of praise or rebuke
I am a lover and speak only of love

Fuzûlî's notion of love, however, has more in common with the Sufi idea of love as a projection of the essence of God—though Fuzûlî himself seems to have belonged to no particular Sufi order—than it does with the Western idea of romantic love. This can be seen in the following lines from another poem:
عاشق ايمش هر ن وار ﻋﺎﻝﻢ
ﻋلم بر قيل و قال ايمش آنجق
‘Aşk imiş her ne var ‘âlem
‘İlm bir kîl ü kâl imiş ancak[11]

All that is in the world is love
And knowledge is nothing but gossip

The first of these lines, especially, relates to the idea of wahdat al-wujūd (وحدة الوجود), or "unity of being", which was first formulated by Ibn al-‘Arabī and which states that nothing apart from various manifestations of God exists. Here, Fuzûlî uses the word "love" (عاشق ‘aşk) rather than God in the formula, but the effect is the same.

In Fuzûlî's œuvre, his most extended treatment of this idea of love is in the long poem Dâstân-ı Leylî vü Mecnun (داستان ليلى و مجنون), a mesnevî which takes as its subject the classical Middle Eastern love story of Layla and Majnun. In his version of the story, Fuzûlî concentrates upon the pain of the mad lover Majnun's separation from his beloved Layla, and comes to see this pain as being of the essence of love:

یا رب بلا عاشق ايله قيل آشنا منى
بر دم بلا عاشقدن ايتمه جدا منى
آز ايلمه عنایتونى اهل دردن
يعنى كه چوح بلالره قيل مبتلا منى
Yâ Rab belâ-yı ‘aşk ile kıl âşinâ meni
Bir dem belâ-yı ‘aşkdan etme cüdâ meni
Az eyleme ‘inâyetüni ehl-i derdden
Ya‘ni ki çoh belâlara kıl mübtelâ meni[12]

Oh God, let me know the pain of love
Do not for even a moment separate me from it
Do not lessen your aid to the afflicted
But rather, make lovesick me one among them

The ultimate value of the suffering of love, in Fuzûlî's work, lies in that it helps one to approach closer to "the Real" (al-Haqq الحق), which is one of the 99 names of God in Islamic tradition.

• Dîvân ("Collected Poems")
• Beng ü Bâde (بنگ و باده; "Hashish and Wine")
• Hadîkat üs-Süedâ (حديقت السعداء; "Garden of Pleasures")
• Dâstân-ı Leylî vü Mecnûn (داستان ليلى و مجنون; "The Epic of Layla and Majnun")
• Risâle-i Muammeyât (رسال ﻤﻌﻤيات; "Treatise on Riddles")
• Şikâyetnâme (شکايت نامه; "Complaint")
[edit] Works in Persian
• Dîvân ("Collected Poems")
• Anîs ol-qalb (انیس القلب; "Friend of the Heart")
• Haft Jâm (هفت جام; "Seven Goblets")
• Rend va Zâhed (رند و زاهد; "Hedonist and Ascetic")
• Resâle-e Muammeyât (رسال ﻤﻌﻤيات; "Treatise on Riddles")
• Sehhat o Ma'ruz (صحت و معروض; "Health and Sickness")
[edit] Works in Arabic
• Dîvân ("Collected Poems")
• Matla' ul-İ'tiqâd (مطلع الاﻋﺘﻘﺎد; "The Birth of Faith")

According to the Encyclopedia Iranica:

“ Fuzuli is credited with some fifteen works in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, both in verse and prose. Although his greatest significance is undoubtedly as a Turkish poet, he is also of importance to Persian literature thanks to his original works in that language (indeed, Persian was the language he preferred for his Shi'ite religious poetry); his Turkish adaptations or translations of Persian works; and the inspiration he derived from Persian models for his Turkish works.

... The fundamental gesture of Fozuli's poetry is inclusiveness. It links Azeri, Turkmen and Ottoman (Rumi) poetry, east and west; it also bridges the religious divide between Shiism and Sunnism. Generations of Ottoman poets admired and wrote responses to his poetry; no contemporary canon can bypass him. ”
References
Primary
• Fuzulî. Fuzulî Divanı: Gazel, Musammat, Mukatta' ve Ruba'î kısmı. Ed. Ali Nihad Tarlan. İstanbul: Üçler Basımevi, 1950.
• Fuzulî. Leylâ ve Mecnun. Ed. Muhammet Nur Doğan. ISBN 975-08-0198-9.
Secondary
• Andrews, Walter G. "Fuzûlî" in Ottoman Lyric Poetry: An Anthology. pp. 235–237. ISBN 0-292-70472-0.
• "Fozule, Mohammad b. Solayman". Encyclopedia Iranica. Retrieved 25 August 2006.
• "Fuzuli, Mehmed bin Süleyman." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2006. Encyclopædia Britannica Premium Service. 23 Aug. 2006 .
• Kudret, Cevdet. Fuzuli. ISBN 9751020166.
• Şentürk, Ahmet Atillâ. "Fuzûlî" in Osmanlı Şiiri Antolojisi. pp. 280–324. ISBN 975-08-0163-6.
Notes
1. ^ "Fuzuli, Mehmed bin Süleyman" in Encyclopædia Britannica
2. ^ "Fozule, Mohammad b. Solayman" in Encyclopaedia Iranica
3. ^ "Fozule, Mohammad b. Solayman" in Encyclopaedia Iranica
4. ^ Şentürk 281
5. ^ Quoted in Andrews, 236.
6. ^ Ibid.
7. ^ Ibid.
8. ^ Kudret 189
9. ^ Andrews 237
10. ^ Tarlan 47
11. ^ Kudret 20
12. ^ Leylâ ve Mecnun 216

Şehitlerimiz...

28-03-2008
Cengiz Bayraktar

Şeref Listesi Birinci Bölum

4 Mayıs 1924 tarihinde İngiliz kuvvetleri tarafından soy kırıma uğrayan IraklıTürkmenler, kızgın bir şekilde Kerkük valiliğine doğru yürür.

Zamanın Kerkük Valisi Kalabalık Türkmen topluluğun karşısına çıkarak bu olayı şiddetle kınadığını, konuyu araştırmak için bir komisyon kurduğunu açıklar. Maddi manevi zarara uğrayanlara veya varislerine tazminat ödeneceğini beyan eder. Daha sonra bu komisyon olay yerinde araştırma yaparak, aşağıda adı bulunan Türkmenlere
tazminat ödeneceğini resmi bir bildiriyle açıklar. Bu bildiriye İngiliz manda hükümeti tarafından Türkçe olarak yayınlanan 4 Şubat 1925 tarihli Necme gazetesinde yer verilir.

./...

http://www.tanis-turkmen.nl/index.php?sub=news&oi=6660&lang=tr&page=1

Şeref Listesi Son Bölum:

http://www.tanis-turkmen.nl/index.php?sub=news&oi=6666&lang=tr&page=1

The Uighurs

Mural in Uighur home
Uighur woman in front of a Yurt

Please click on:

http://the_uighurs.tripod.com/

The Uighurs is one of the ancient Turkic peoples. They settled on territory of Eastern Turkestan (at present Xinjiang-Uighur Autonomous Region of Peoples Republic of China), and of present Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan long time ago. Nowadays the population of the Uighurs is about 8-10 millions. The Uighur language belongs to the Qarluq group of the Turkic languages. There are 3 stages in history of the Uighur language:

1. The Ancient stage consisting of 2 periods: the Most Ancient (up to the 5th century AD) and the Ancient (the 6-11th centuries) ones;


2. The Medieval stage breaking up for 2 periods: the Early Medieval (the 11-14th centuries) and the Medieval (the 14-18 th centuries) ones;


3. The Modern stage divided into the New (the 18-19th centuries) and the Newest (the 20th centuries) ones.

At various stages of historical evolution the Uighurs created a number of states. The First Uighur Qaghanat was established in Khanghaj in 323. It existed 200 years. The Second Uighur Qaghanat was founded in 523 and existed 80 years. It was destroyed by the Turkic Qaghanat in 603. In 743 the Third Uighur Qaghanat was built on the ashes of the Eastern-Turkic Qaghanat located on territory of the present Northern Mongolia. It was ruined in struggle with the ancient Khaqases in 840. The Third Uighur Qaghanat was a feudal state with the tribal vestiges.

However, despite these vestiges, the association of the Uighurs, formation of the Qaghanat, declaration of the Qaghan with hereditary authority are to be considered as a new stage in ethnic and political development of the Uighurs. The important expression of awareness of necessity of ethnic and political unity on the certain development stage was the acceptance of the self-name "the Uighurs". New union resulted in formation of the Qaghanat and in acceptance of common name "the Uighurs" appeared to be a stronger ethnic formation, which should be regarded to as a replacement of the tribal-patrimonial union by the ethnic group and in the aspect of public development - as a replacement of the patrimonial relations by the feudal ones.

In the Third Uighur Qaghanat the various crafts, agriculture and cattle breeding were highly developed. " The monuments and relics prove an originality of the Uighur civilization. Though the material culture of the Uighurs has deep Central Asian roots it was the Uighurs who began seriously to spread settled civilization with construction of large multi-quarter towns and fortresses in the Central Asian steppes."

The Uighurs already had high culture and written language in the beginning of the 5th century AD. Their script was developed from the Sogdian one. Along with the Sogdian script the Uighurs adopted Manicheism from the West. With accepting of Manicheism in 762 the Uighur society got acquainted closer with painting and other elements of the Sogdian culture.

After the fall of the Third Uighur Qaghanat in 840 the Uighurs created a state on territory of Eastern Turkestan with the center in town of Turpan. The Uighur state at the feet of Eastern Tian-Shan mountains (the 9-14th centuries) achieved high level of development in all areas. Territory of the state was approximately 500,000 sq.km. Its borders laid to the west of the town of Qoutchar and far to the East of the town of Khami, to the north of Urumchie and in the south at Khotan. In 902-1036 the Uighur Ghanjou state was formed. The Uighur Koutchar Princedom existed in 11-12 centuries.

The Uighurs practiced Buddhism before they were converted into Islam.
The culture of Buddhist Qashqar was enriched by influence of Central Asia, Iran, Byzantium and adoptions from Syrian, Sogdian and other cultures of the Asian Middle Ages.



History of Uighurs in brief:
http://the_uighurs.tripod.com/hist.htm


Uighur Script:
http://the_uighurs.tripod.com/Scrpt.htm

Listen to Uighur Music:
http://uighurmusic.tripod.com/


Watch: The Uighurs ( soundtrack from a movie called uch oghul )
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yc8HxlL6VJ4

UIGHURS IN GUANTANAMO

March 28, 2008
A Chinese Muslim's Desperate Plea From Gitmo
by Andy Worthington

The stories of the Uighurs in Guantánamo – Muslims from the oppressed Xinjiang province of China, formerly known as East Turkistan – have long demonstrated chronic injustice on the part of the U.S. authorities to those who know of them, although they have only sporadically registered on the media's radar.

Numbering 22 men in total, three were picked up randomly in Afghanistan, another was caught crossing the Pakistani border disguised in a burqa, while the other 18 were seized together by opportunistic Pakistani villagers after fleeing Afghanistan in the wake of the U.S.-led invasion in October 2001, and sold to U.S. forces for a bounty, as was common at the time. A leaflet dropped by U.S. planes offered enterprising villagers and soldiers "millions of dollars for helping the anti-Taliban force catch al-Qaeda and Taliban murderers."

These 18 men, who had fled their homeland because of persecution, in search of a new life, or in the hope of gaining some sort of training to enable them to fight back against their oppressors, had been living together in a small, run-down hamlet in Afghanistan's Tora Bora mountains, mending the settlement's ruined buildings, and occasionally training on their only weapon, an aging AK-47.

After the U.S.-led invasion, they were targeted in a U.S. bombing raid, in which several men died. The survivors then made their way across the mountains to the Pakistani border, where they were first welcomed by the villagers, then betrayed by them. In U.S. custody, they attracted attention because of their supposed insights into the workings of the Chinese government, but it was apparent from early on that they had not been involved with either the Taliban or al-Qaeda, and that there was no reason to hold them.

Unfortunately for the Uighurs, however, the declaration of their innocence only prefaced further problems, as they joined one of Guantánamo's least enviable groups: cleared prisoners who, because of international treaties, cannot be returned to their home countries for fear that they will be subjected to torture, or worse. The U.S. government had obligingly declared those opposed to Chinese rule in Xinjiang province as "terrorists," in order to secure support for the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and had even allowed – or invited – Chinese interrogators to question the men in Guantánamo, but when it came to returning them to China they refused to do so.

Attempts to persuade other countries to accept the Uighurs – and other cleared prisoners who faced similar problems with repatriation – were both long and largely futile. Despite the fact that some of these men had been regarded as wrongly detained while they were in U.S.-run prisons in Afghanistan, and many had been cleared after military tribunals in Guantánamo in 2004, it was not until May 2006 that one country – Albania, one of Europe's poorest nations – could be prevailed upon to accept five of the men, who were joined, in December 2006, by another three cleared prisoners from Algeria, Egypt, and the former Soviet Union.

Living in a UN refugee camp in Tirana has not been without its problems – there is no Uighur community in Albania, no prospect of work, and no opportunity for the men to have contact with their families – but it is at least better than being in Guantánamo, where their compatriots, who have, for the most part, also been cleared for release (the exact details are, like much else at Guantánamo, difficult to gauge with absolute confidence), remain in a limbo that seems, literally, to be without end.

Compounding their suffering, the Uighurs, like the majority of the dozens of other cleared prisoners, are held not in comfort in Camp 4 (Guantánamo's only block with communal dorms) but in Camp 6, a maximum security prison in which they are held in complete isolation, in metal cells without windows, for 22 to 23 hours a day.

One of these men is Abdulghappar, who is now 35 years old. In 2004, he explained to his military tribunal that he had traveled to Afghanistan to "get some training to fight back against the Chinese government," and added that he had nothing against the United States. He said that his own people "and my own family are being tortured under the Chinese government," and when asked, "Was it your intention when you were training to fight against the U.S. or its allies?" came up with an answer that summed up the feelings of all his imprisoned compatriots: "I have one point: a billion Chinese enemies, that is enough for me. Why would I get more enemies?"
Abdulghappar recently wrote a letter to his lawyers, which was declassified by the military censors who review all correspondence between lawyers and their clients. It was then passed to the Associated Press, who quoted parts of the letter in an article last week, which was then picked up by other media outlets.

In the hope of providing Abdulghappar with more of his own voice, however, I asked his lawyers for a copy of the letter, which I reproduce in its entirety below. As it is a translation, I have taken the liberty of editing the language to convey his message more fully.

Abdulghappar's Letter From Guantánamo

How are you, Mr. J. Wells Dixon and Ms. Seema Saifee? I hope that this letter reaches you before you come over, and I hope that it will be a little beneficial for our Turkistani brothers' situation here.

We, the Turkistani brothers, left our homeland in order to escape from the brutal suppression and unfair treatment from the Chinese government towards our people. The Uighur youth back home were either incarcerated because of false accusations or prosecuted and executed because of bogus allegations. It was extremely difficult for any Uighur to see a future for themselves within our homeland, and both young and middle-aged Uighurs started to leave East Turkistan and try to find survival abroad, if anyone could find a way to get out. We, the Uighurs in Guantánamo, are also like those Uighurs. We left our homeland for the same cause and sought solace in our neighboring countries.

As you know, for some specific reasons we ended up in Afghanistan. When we arrived in Afghanistan, the U.S. army invaded. We had to depart for Pakistan, since we could not stay in Afghanistan. As we did not know anyone who could help us there, we had no other choice but to leave. The Pakistani people then arrested us and turned us over to the Pakistani government. Subsequently, the Pakistani government sold us to the U.S. Army for bounties. The U.S. Army then brought us to Guantánamo.

Since the very beginning of the interrogations, we have been saying this. Our circumstances are very clear to the U.S. government, the U.S. Army and related agencies. Thus, the East Turkistani people and we, the Uighurs in Guantánamo, have never had any revulsion against the U.S. at any time, and this would never be possible, because our homeland is being occupied and we need the help of others.

We were very pleased at the beginning when the Pakistanis turned us over to American custody. We sincerely hoped that America would be sympathetic to us and help us. Unfortunately, the facts were different. Although in 2004 and 2005 we were told that we were innocent, we have been incarcerated in jail for the past six years until the present day. We fail to know why we are still in jail here.

We still hope that the U.S. government will free us soon and send us to a safe place. Being away from family, away from our homeland, and also away from the outside world and losing any contact with anyone is not suitable for a human being, as, also, is being forbidden from experiencing natural sunlight and natural air, and being surrounded by a metal box on all sides.
I was very healthy in the past. However, since I was brought to Camp 6, I got rheumatism. My joints started to hurt all the time and are getting worse. My kidneys started to hurt ten days ago.

My countryman Abdulrazaq used to have rheumatism for a while, and since he came to Camp 6 it got worse. Sometime in early August, the U.S. Army told Abdulrazaq that he was cleared to be released, and also issued the release form to him in writing. As a result, Abdulrazaq requested to move to a camp that had better conditions, for health reasons. When his request was ignored he embarked on a hunger strike, which has lasted for over a month now.

Currently, he is on punishment and his situation is even worse. He is shackled to the restraint chair and force-fed twice a day by the guards, who wear glass shields on their faces. This has taken place for the past 20 days. For someone who has not eaten for a long time, such treatment is not humane. Abdulrazaq would never want to go on hunger strike. However, the circumstances here forced him to do so, as he had no other choice. If the oppression was not unbearable, who would want to throw himself on a burning fire? In the U.S. Constitution, is it a crime for someone to ask to protect his health and to ask for his rights? If it does count as a crime, then what is the difference between the U.S. Constitution and the Communist constitution? What is the difference between this and Hitler's policies during the Second World War?

I have heard that an Egyptian man broke his back and became handicapped while he was being handled by a team in Camp 1 or 2, and then he was sent home as a crippled person for the rest of his life [Sami el-Leithi, released in October 2005]. Another Libyan broke his arm also. I worry that Abdulrazaq will face a similar or worse situation while being force-fed twice a day for a long time, and I am also concerned for his psychological condition as it is extremely difficult for him to keep his mental state normal under such circumstances.

Recently, I started to wonder, "Why are we staying in this jail for so long?" I wonder if we will be released after we damage our internal and external organs and our arms and legs. Or is it necessary for a few Turkistanis to die, as happened in the past here in this jail, in order to gain others' attention and their concern towards our matter?

Such thoughts are in my mind all the time. The reason I am writing this letter to you is that I sincerely hope that you and others related to law and enforcement can solve this issue quickly and help us in a practical manner.

Abdulghappar Turkistani (281)

December 12, 2007

Guantánamo Bay jail, Camp 6

[For more on the Uighurs in Guantánamo, see my book The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America's Illegal Prison.]

Iraq Oil to be Shipped to Israel

http://heyetnet.org/en/content/view/2716/31/

Friday, 21 March 2008

The United States has asked Israel to check the possibility of pumping oil from Iraq to the oil refineries in Haifa. The request came in a telegram last week from a senior Pentagon official to a top Foreign Ministry official in Jerusalem.

The Prime Minister's Office, which views the pipeline to Haifa as a "bonus" the U.S. could give to Israel in return for its unequivocal support for the American-led campaign in Iraq, had asked the Americans for the official telegram.

The new pipeline would take oil from the Kirkuk area, where some 40 percent of Iraqi oil is produced, and transport it via Mosul, and then across Jordan to Israel. The U.S. telegram included a request for a cost estimate for repairing the Mosul-Haifa pipeline that was in use prior to 1948. During the War of Independence, the Iraqis stopped the flow of oil to Haifa and the pipeline fell into disrepair over the years.

The National Infrastructure Ministry has recently conducted research indicating that construction of a 42-inch diameter pipeline between Kirkuk and Haifa would cost about $400,000 per kilometer. The old Mosul-Haifa pipeline was only 8 inches in diameter.

National Infrastructure Minister Yosef Paritzky said yesterday that the port of Haifa is an attractive destination for Iraqi oil and that he plans to discuss this matter with the U.S. secretary of energy during his planned visit to Washington next month. Paritzky added that the plan depends on Jordan's consent and that Jordan would receive a transit fee for allowing the oil to piped through its territory. The minister noted, however, that "due to pan-Arab concerns, it will be hard for the Jordanians to agree to the flow of Iraqi oil via Jordan and Israel."

Sources in Jerusalem confirmed yesterday that the Americans are looking into the possibility of laying a new pipeline via Jordan and Israel. (There is also a pipeline running via Syria that has not been used in some three decades.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=332835&contrassID=...

So this is one of the main reasons American troops are dying in action. Action directed against Iraqi civilians. Actions that have killed close to ONE MILLION Iraqi civilians to date and laid waste to that nation.

All of this death and destruction so Iraqi oil could be shipped to Israel. My, that must be a comforting thought to all of those parents still grieving the loss of their son or daughter, killed in action. Killed fighting not for Democracy, but for Israel.

As soon as the "Theft of Iraqi Oil Law" is passed by their Parliament, the oil will begin to flow to Haifa and into the demented Likudnik regime's pockets.

And that law will be passed. Even if it takes an American engineered coup that tosses Maliki out of office in favor of a Saddam Hussein style strongman to knock together a few heads to pass the "Theft of Iraqi Oil Law."

Looks like we've come full circle. Now, it's time to bring "Democracy", American style, to Iran and "liberate" their oilfields.

HEYET Net- wakeupfromyourslumber.com

Iraq: Five years of intentional destruction - Vijf jaar oorlog. Vijf jaar vernietiging. Vijf jaar verzet.

zie:
http://brusselstribunal.org/


Dirk Adriaensens, member of the BRussells Tribunal executive committee (12 Maart 2008)

Een aantal mythes die de VS hebben gehanteerd om de invasie en bezetting van Irak te rechtvaardigen, zijn reeds doorprikt. Andere blijven nog steeds overeind. Vijf jaar oorlog is het gepaste moment om enkele voorgekauwde denkbeelden in vraag te stellen. De meeste mensen weten nu wel dat Bush en zijn Administratie gelogen hebben. De Bush bende heeft exact 935 keer gelogen tussen 11 september 2001 en 19 maart 2003 om hun invasie te rechtvaardigen. Media-spotters hebben dat precies berekend.

Zo waren er geen massavernietigingswapens, waren er geen banden met Al Qaeda en was het ook al geen oorlog om democratie te brengen. Dat laatste heeft Alan Greenspan, ex-baas van de FED, voldoende duidelijk gemaakt. Het was de olie die de belangrijkste drijfveer was voor de invasie.

- de oorlog is voor de Neocon VS-strategen geen fiasco, maar een succes. Enkel het massaal volksverzet heeft roet in het eten gegooid.

(originally published: http://www.vrede.be/nieuw_view.php?id=1185)
________________________________________
Iraq: five years of intentional destruction.

Many people think that the Bush Administration had no plan for post-war Iraq. I believe this is not true. The total destruction of the country and the annihilation of its people were part of the agenda.

Army and police were disbanded, ministries plundered (except the Ministry of information and oil). All that is needed for the organisation of the society has been destroyed, looted, burned, rapidly and with high precision. Then the whole Iraqi Administration was dismantled by the “debaathification” campaign. Capable middle class functionaries in every domain of society were fired and replaced by an incompetent and corrupt workforce, selected along ethnical lines, faithful to the occupation. According to the Annual Corruption Ranking report of 27 september 2007, Iraq is the third most corrupt country in the world.

All this was part of the plan, in accordance to the ideologists of the neocons. Michael Ledeen: “creative destruction is our middle name, We do it automatically. . . . It is time once again to export the democratic revolution." Or even better formulated by Adam G. Mersereau, an attorney and former mariner: "Total war not only destroys the enemy's military forces, but also brings the enemy society to an extremely personal point of decision, so that they are willing to accept a reversal of the cultural trends. The sparing of civilian lives cannot be the total war's first priority. . . . The purpose of total war is to permanently force your will onto another people."

According to a recent opinion of William Kristol, one of the PNAC ideologists, there’s only reason to be optimistic for the US. Almost all the goals that were planned, have been achieved: Iraq destroyed, total control over the country, permanent military bases, the biggest US embassy in the world, massive privatisations, even the agriculture has been given to Monsanto, a new constitution was drafted, supervised by the US and the oil law in the phase of being approved soon.

The Iraqi resistance

Game, set and match for the US? No, not quite. The only factor that has been underestimated by the US is the national popular resistance against the occupation. This resistance has forced the US to spend 3 trillion dollar. This will plunge the US and the world in an ever deepening economic crisis.

Here are some recent statistics from February 2008:
- 166.895 coalition troops (157.000 US soldiers)
- 200.000 mercenaries (contractors)
- Iraqi army: 197.254 soldiers
- 200.132 Iraqi security forces, including the notorious special police commandos

The “surge” in 2007 was not only a surge in the number of soldiers, but also in the number of airstrikes a (a rise with 500%) and a surge in the number of refugees and Internally displaced persons (a rise with 272%).
In short: more than 750.000 army and police cannot guarantee the safety of the people in Iraq and can not stop the Iraqi resistance. Why?

The average number of attacks have increased in the first part of 2007 to about 185 per day. That is 1300 per week, and over 5500 attacks per month. 75% of the recorded attacks, (here based on the quarterly reviews to congress only) has remained directed at the occupation forces directly, and further 17% at the Iraqi government forces. The remaining, 8% are directed at unspecified civilian targets. It is this that makes the media.

Civil war or counter-insurgency?

According to several polls, the majority of the Iraqis is convinced that sectarian tensions will diminish when the occupation troops leave. According to most Iraqis there is no civil war in Iraq and sectarian tensions are created and encouraged by the occupiers.

How do they do it? Who are the different actors who destabilize the country? Who creates the conditions for a civil war? Let’s try to find out.

A. Militias.

Long before the invasion, the US and its allies were involved in the training and arming of tens of thousands of militias and anti-Iraq collaborators. The most conspicuous of these militia groups are:

1. The Iraqi National Congress (INC) led by Ahmed Chalabi.

2. The Iraqi National Accord (INA) led by Iyad Allawi, the U.S./Britain most preferred ‘strongman’.

Both groups constitute of Iraqi expatriates (including ex-Ba’athists), trained and armed by the U.S. and Britain.

3. The Badr Brigade, the armed wing of the Da’awa/SCIRI religious 'parties' led by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, Ibrahim al-Jaafari and Nuri al-Maliki. This group constitutes of thousands of Iraqi expatriates and illegal Iranian immigrants expelled from Iraq in the 1980’s. The group is trained and heavily armed by Iran and the U.S.

4. The Kurdish militia (the Peshmerga) led by warlords were trained and armed by the U.S. and Israel.[19]

There is also the Sadr movement (known as the Mehdi Army), led by Muqtada al-Sadr. The movement has been accused of many crimes and sectarian killings since the Sadr movement entered the political process.

Since the invasion, each militia group has mutated into several groups of death squads and criminal gangs such as the Wolf Brigade, the Karar Brigade, the Falcon Brigade, the Amarah Brigade, the Muthana Brigade, the Defenders of Kadhimiyah, and the special police commandos. They are armed and financed by the U.S. and its allies, and fully integrated into the Occupation. Each group is carefully used by the occupying forces for terrorising the Iraqi civilian population in a campaign designed to erode the civilian population’s support for the Iraqi Resistance against the Occupation. U.S. military sources have openly admitted that the population, where support for the Resistance is high, “is paying no price for the support it is giving to the [Resistance] … We have to change that equation”, (Newsweek, 14 January 2004). In other words, Iraqis civilians are deliberately targeted for rejecting the Occupation. [20]

B. British terrorists in Iraq.

An article in the Sunday Telegraph points towards clear evidence British special forces are recruiting, training terrorists to heighten ethnic tensions. An elite SAS wing with bloody past in Northern Ireland operates with immunity and provides advanced explosives [22]. Some attacks are being blamed on Iranians, Sunni insurgents or shadowy terrorist cells such as "Al Qaeda” [23]. It is led by Lt. Col. Gordon Kerr, heading the Special Reconnaissance Regiment (SRR), a large counter-terrorism force made up of unnamed "existing assets" from the glory days in Northern Ireland and elsewhere. And America's covert soldiers are right there with them, working side-by-side with their British comrades in the aptly named "Task Force Black," the UK's Sunday Telegraph reports. [21]

This confirms what many have speculated for a long time, that Britain and the US are deeply involved in bombings and attacks inside Iraq.

C. Facilities Protection Services (FPS).

There is also the claim of Iraq's interior minister Jawad al-Bolani, speaking to a small group of reporters in Baghdad on October 12 2006, who blamed the Facilities Protection Service, or FPS, a massive but unregulated government guard force whose numbers he put at about 150,000. [24] "Whenever we capture someone, we rarely find anyone is an employee of the government ministries," Bolani said. “When they are, they've turned out to be mostly from the FPS, with very few individual, actual incidents involving anyone from the Ministry of Interior or Ministry of Defense." [25]

Private US and UK security firms are closely allied to Mr. Bremer’s ‘Facilities Protection Service’ programme in Iraq. Newsweek (24.04.06) suggested 146,000 belong to this ‘security’ force. And recent figures put the number at 200.000. The former Interior Minister, Bayan Jabr, associated the FPS with the endemic ‘death squads’ operating inside the police forces, which are hastening the disintegration of Iraq [26] So definitely these mercenaries are involved in covert operations.

D. Special police commandos.

According to Greg Jaffe of the Wall Street Journal, the “special police commandos” are being used throughout Iraq and have been conducting criminal assassinations known as the “Salvador option” with the full knowledge of U.S. forces. At the end of 2003, when it became clear that the US would face tough resistance against their occupation, part of a secret $3 billion in funds—tucked away in the $87 billion Iraq appropriation that Congress approved in early November 2003—went toward the creation of a paramilitary unit manned by militiamen associated with former Iraqi exile groups. Experts said in 2003 already that this could lead to a wave of extrajudicial killings, not only of armed rebels but of nationalists, other opponents of the U.S. occupation and thousands of civilian Baathists—up to 120,000 of the estimated 2.5 million former Baath Party members in Iraq. According to an article published in New York Times Magazine in September 2004, Counsellor to the US Ambassador for Iraqi Security Forces James Steele was assigned to work with a new elite Iraqi counter-insurgency unit known as the Special Police Commandos, formed under the operational control of Iraq’s Interior Ministry.

From 1984 to 1986 then Col. Steele had led the US Military Advisory Group in El Salvador, where he was responsible for developing special operating forces at brigade level during the height of the conflict (…) The Police Commandos are in large part the brainchild of another US counter-insurgency veteran, Steven Casteel, a former top DEA man who has been acting as the senior advisor in the Ministry of the Interior. Casteel was involved in the hunt for Colombia’s notorious cocaine baron Pablo Escobar, during which the DEA collaborated with a paramilitary organization known as Los Pepes, which later transformed itself into the AUC, an umbrella organization covering all of Colombia’s paramilitary death squads. [29]

On April 30 2006, the Organisation for Follow-up and Monitoring wrote: “After exact counting and documenting, the Iraqi Organisation for Follow-up and Monitoring has confirmed that 92 % of the 3498 bodies found in different regions of Iraq have been arrested by officials of the Ministry of Interior. Nothing was known about the arrestees’ fate until their riddled bodies were found with marks of horrible torture. It’s regrettable and shameful that these crimes are being suppressed and that several states receive government officials, who fail to investigate these crimes.”

E. The occupation forces.

The British medical journal The Lancet reported on 11 October 2006 that the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq has led to the deaths of between 426,000 and 794,000 Iraqis. “While recision about such figures is difficult, we can be confident that the excess deaths were above 390,000, and may in fact be as high as 940,000. The vast majority (92 per cent) of the excess deaths were due to direct violence. (…)” 31 percent of those killed were actually slain by U.S. and "coalition" forces.

Iraqis in the volatile al-Anbar province west of Baghdad are reporting regular killings carried out by U.S. forces that many believe are part of a 'genocidal' strategy.

Harassment from U.S. forces is a greater threat to the work of the Iraqi Red Crescent than insurgent attacks, a senior official of the Red Cross-linked humanitarian organization said.

So the occupation forces certainly aren’t in Iraq to protect the Iraqi people. Much to the contrary.

F. Criminal gangs.

The last group in this list are the ordinary criminal gangs, who do f.i. kidnappings for ransom money. They play a marginal, but instrumental role in the current instability in Iraq. Because none of the crimes committed are investigated, the victims have the impression that law and order are non-existent in the “new Iraq”. So most of them flee the country with their families. I mention ordinary criminality at the end of this list because ordinary criminals – and there are a lot of them in Iraq - are the only group that is not structurally linked to the occupation and its stooges. But thesez bandits can do their crimes with impunity, under the eyes of 750.000 security forces, without fear of being caught or prosecuted. This feeds the suspicion among the Iraqis that the occupier at least tolerates these crimes in order to create as much chaos as possible, for the sole purpose to defeat the resistance.

6. Conclusion

All these actors help to destroy the Republic of Iraq, kill and expel its people, annihilate its middle class, all this with the active (or tacid) support of the US occupation authorities, in a campaign of counter-insurgency that resembles the many “dirty wars” of the US during the past 50 years.

So instead of bringing stability to Iraq, the US occupation is doing everything it possibly can to create chaos and terror, to incite civil war and sectarian strife, in order to defeat the National Popular Resistance and to break the aspirations of the Iraqi people to live in a sovereign state and decide its own future.

Consequently the only possible road to a solution is the total and immediate withdrawal of all foreign troops from Iraqi soil. US forces must negotiate an immediate withdrawal with the Iraqi resistance. The peace movement has to understand that these demands are crucial to achieve a peaceful solution.

Dirk Adriaensens.

Red Crescent warns of US teaming up with Peshmerga in the coming Mosul campaign

Posted in Missing links:

http://arablinks.blogspot.com/2008/03/red-crescent-warns-of-us-teaming-up.html

Azzaman said in its Thursday-Friday March 13-14 edition:
The Iraqi Red Crescent organization warned of a possible large-scale emigration (or exodus) of people from Ninawa and its main city Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq (population 8.3 million), once the security operations start, that have been planned for several weeks now by combined forces. The Disaster Management Division of the organization said in a statement that was obtained yesterday by Azzaman it thinks it very likely that this would cause a large exodus of families from those districts that see armed confrontations aimed at clearing the city of armed people.

Residents [the journalist continues, as if by way of explanation] blame the government which permitted Peshmerga militias to be active in regional matters, and they are trying to have this policy changed.

And the Red Crescent statement referred to the tension the city has been under since the Zanjili explosions that destroyed a hundred houses and wounded several hundred people.

The rest of the Azzaman piece outlines previous Red Crescent estimates of total numbers of Iraqi displaced persons, and talks about recent attacks on policemen and so on, and doesn't say anything more about the feared new Mosul evacuation. I was going to write something about it, but not only was there no elaboration in the Azzaman story, there also wasn't a corrresponding statement on the Red Crescent website, in Arabic or in English either. Then on Saturday, Azzaman posted something included in its English-language stories, that provided a fuller explanation. It went like this:

By Salem Areef
Azzaman, March 15, 2008
The Iraqi Red Crescent Society is warning of a massive exodus if U.S. and Iraqi troops go ahead with plans to attack Mosul, the country’s second largest city with nearly 3.8 million people.

The northern city which is the capital of the Province of Nineveh has turned into a major stronghold for forces resisting U.S. occupation and elements of the al-Qadeda organization.
Tensions are high and violence has gripped the city in the past few months with at least one hundred houses destroyed and hundreds of people killed or injured.

Certain quarters are so violent that neither U.S. troops nor Iraqi forces are capable of entering.
But the society said it feared a joint attack in which units of Kurdish militias are to take part will lead to one of the largest waves of internally displace people the country has seen since the 2003 U.S. invasion.

Hard pressed ethnic and religious minorities in the city have been leaving either to the Kurdish north or neighboring Syria.

Mosul is a predominantly Sunni Arab city and residents are apparently unhappy with the role U.S. occupation troops have given to Kurdish militia fighters.
The Arabs see Kurdish involvement in areas which have traditionally not been part of Iraqi Kurdistan with suspicious eyes.

Kurdish militias are now present in most villages and towns which are administratively part of Mosul as the center of Nineveh Province.

Some of these areas hold huge oil reserves like Ain Zala.

There are already about three million Iraqi refugees in neighboring states and more than two million others are displaced as a result of ongoing U.S. military operations and sectarian strife.
This provides a better explanation what the fear is: US forces have granted a security role in the area to Peshmerga militias. The population, majority Arab, is not only unhappy with that, but there is also the fear that once the promised security operations start, Peshmerga will be involved alongside the US forces, and this will add further to the risk of mass exodus of Arab families. (Oddly enough, there is still no corresponding statement on the Red Crescent site. Rather, what they have done is simply to link to the Azzaman English-language, from the English side of their site, with no mention of it on their Arabic-language side).

(Please recall that the December 24 Memorandum of Understanding between Tareq al-Hashemi's Islamic Party of Iraq and the two main Kurdish parties was rumored to include an addendum (never published) that in effect purported to grant the Kurdish parties and by implication the Peshmerga, some kind of jurisdiction over parts of Mosul and/or the wider Ninawa governate. This was discussed in my Dec 28 post called Sunni groups smell a sellout by Hashemi in the North.)

I mention these issues now, so that if and when this further refugee crisis comes to be, as a result of US forces teaming up with Peshmerga in an Arab area, no one will be able to say, as has been so often said in the past: "The US authorities knew nothing about it; it was nothing more than another blunder". Maybe that's why they put this in English.

IRAK: Que se passe-t-il à Bassora?

http://www.legrandsoir.info/spip.php?article6248

De mal empire

Thèmes : Irak Nouvel Ordre Mondial
jeudi 27 mars 2008

Comprendre ce que cherchent les Etats-unis ici comme ailleurs.
IRAK : Que se passe-t-il à Bassora ?

BLEITRACH Danielle

Il est malaisé de comprendre la situation irakienne tant les groupes rivaux et les forces paraissent émiettées. Après l’affrontement sunnites/chiites, voici que dans le sud, à Bassora, c’est l’affrontement du gouvernement chiite avec les milices chiites de Moqtar el Sadr. Le danger avec Bush c’est qu’il incite à sous-estimer la capacité de nuisance des Etats-Unis. Son gouvernement apparait comme celui d’un perpétuel échec. Bush paraît énoncer un ordre et il n’engendre que le chaos. Mais si telle était justement la victoire d’un système en crise profonde, en lutte contre son déclin et ne trouvant d’autre issue que dans les violences, les guerres, le chaos ?

Si instaurer « la démocratie en Irak » et par contagion dans tout le Moyen orient était le projet officiel de l’invasion, l’échec serait patent. Mais est-ce que les Etats-Unis, leurs dirigeants, quelqu’un comme Dick Cheney, ont jamais eu un tel projet ? Alors, si l’on jugeait de l’invasion sur ses véritables objectifs, que faudrait-il en penser ? Les véritables objectifs étant de s’approprier les richesses pétrolières et d’avoir dans le gouvernement irakien l’instrument essentiel de leur capacité, de plus en plus contestée par l’OPEP, d’imposer le paiement du pétrole en dollars. Alors on ne parlerait plus d’échec. On constaterait que de tels objectifs dans la conquête d’un pays ne peuvent être atteints qu’en empêchant systématiquement l’instauration d’un ordre quelconque. Pour cela il faut encourager les luttes de factions autour des miettes du pillage jetées de la table des vainqueurs, transformer le pays en terrain clos de toutes les guerres civiles sur des bases ethniques, religieuses, et faire régner l’insécurité et le meurtre.

Il y a un autre risque d’ordre qu’il faut également contrôler et casser impérativement, celui des marges. Celles-ci peuvent s’unifier, leurs peuples peuvent développer une vision nationale et vouloir s’implanter dans le dit chaos : les Kurdes au nord, l’Iran au sud.
Chaque fois que la situation risque d’aboutir au scénario de la pacification, les violences doivent reprendre et les terroristes, paramilitaires financés par la CIA, doivent provoquer violences et désordres.

Si les Etats-Unis apparaissent de plus en plus comme l’Etat terroriste par excellence, c’est que leur unilatéralisme, leur volonté de ne jamais tolérer de puissance conquérante, tant au plan mondial que local, passe par l’entretien systématique de ce terrorisme. La guerre civile fait partie du scenario de leur domination, non seulement comme mode de gestion interne du pays conquis mais pour empêcher que les marges deviennent trop conquérantes. Le modèle irakien est devenu d’ailleurs une méthode que les Etats-Unis souhaitent exporter sur d’autres continents (1).

C’est un grand classique de toutes les conquêtes : diviser pour régner. Déjà Machiavel donnait ce conseil aux conquérants : « Il en va donc ainsi qu’aussitôt qu’un étranger puissant entre en une province, tous ceux qui y sont faibles se joignent à lui, poussés par l’envie qu’ils ont contre celui qui leur a fait subir sa puissance, si bien qu’au regard des petits, il n’a point de peine à les gagner, car aussitôt ils s’unissent tous et font bloc avec l’Etat qu’il a conquis dans le pays. Il a seulement à penser qu’ils ne s’acquièrent trop grande puissance et autorité, et peut facilement tant par ses forces que par leur faveur, abaisser ceux qui sont puissants pour demeurer seul arbitre dans le pays. Qui ne suivra bien ce point, il perdra bientôt ce qu’il aura gagné, et pendant le temps qu’il le tiendra, il y aura mille difficultés et tracas. » (2)

Voici effectivement le spectacle qu’offre l’Irak sous protectorat nord-américain
« Cinq ans après, Bagdad est méconnaissable. Les quartiers sont séparés par des murs, par suite du déchaînement des violences interconfessionnelles, qui font rage surtout depuis l’attentat qui a frappé, en février 2006, l’un des principaux sanctuaires chiites à Samarra, la mosquée d’Or.

Quant au nombre des victimes, la confusion règne : plus de 1 million de morts selon des organisations non gouvernementales, moins de 150 000 selon le gouvernement irakien. A cela s’ajoute une hécatombe de journalistes sans précédent, qui a fait au moins 233 victimes. Sans parler des réfugiés dans les pays voisins et des déplacés à l’intérieur même du pays, dont le nombre se situe entre 3 millions et 4 millions, véritable marque d’infamie à la fois pour les libérateurs et pour ceux qui ont été libérés. » (3)

Voilà pour le coeur même du pays. Mais il faut voir également que le chaos est organisé aux marges et on ne comprend rien à la manière dont les Etats-Unis ont toléré voir encouragé l’expédition militaire Turque contre les Kurdes si l’on ne mesure pas que l’unité kurde elle-même doit être mise à mal selon la logique étasunienne. Les kurdes ont été apparemment les grands bénéficiaires de la guerre. Ils ont consolidé leur pouvoir régional, obtenu un état fédéral dont ils sont en fait le centre de gravité puisque tous les autres sont si divisés qu’ils sont en situation d’imposer leurs volontés y compris en matière de distribution de la manne pétrolière. Oui mais voilà, leur appétit est peu à peu apparu sans limite et leur prise de contrôle de la zone pétrolière de Kirkuk a été le signe pour le conquérant nord-américain qu’ils devaient être rabaissés. Les Turcs ont été lâchés pour bien manifester que les Etats-Unis ne seraient pas toujours à leurs côtés et que, s’ils ne bornaient pas leur puissance, on saurait les dévaster.
La stratégie des Etats-Unis n’a pas d’allié, simplement des intérêts variables au jour le jour et chacun doit l’apprendre à ses dépens.

C’est dans ce contexte-là qu’il faut comprendre les événements de Bassora
Bassora c’est la ville chiite rebelle - tant sur le plan de son histoire la plus lointaine (4) que sous Saddam Hussein. Ce fut la ville communiste. A ce titre, et pas seulement parce qu’elle était chiite, elle a subi la répression de Saddam Hussein. Derrière la confession chiite, il y a le monde ouvrier du port et du pétrole, son syndicalisme. Ce sont les britanniques qui ont géré l’occupation en entretenant les divisions, en s’appuyant sur les luttes confessionnelles pour empêcher l’unification nationale. La ville est prise à la gorge par les partis islamistes qui s’opposent sur tout sauf sur le désir de se partager richesses et revenus pétroliers.

Jusqu’à ces derniers jours, les combats opposaient principalement les milices de Moqtar al-Sadr et celles du Conseil Suprême de la Révolution Islamique en Irak (CSRII) et du Dawa. Les premières, rassemblées dans une structure très lâche, l’Armée du Mehdi, comptent environ 60 000 hommes et sont largement plus combatives que les groupes du CSRII et du Dawa. D’où une stabilité précaire, tributaire de la volonté de ces partis dont l’un ou l’autre pourrait, à tout moment, vouloir augmenter sa part du gâteau. Mais c’est la seule manière qui a été trouvée pour empêcher l’unification nationale et l’influence de Téhéran sur cette zone par laquelle passent 80% des ressources pétrolières actuelles.

Si l’on n’admet pas que la stratégie des Etats-Unis a effectivement besoin d’un chaos généralisé, on ne comprend pas le pourquoi d’une guerre civile à Bassora, où l’on compterait jusqu’à 40 morts et 200 blessés en deux jours. Les Universités sont fermées et il y a des risques de pénurie pétrolière. Pourquoi, à la veille des élections présidentielles étasuniennes, alors que les dirigeants actuels des Etats-Unis et Mac Cain se félicitaient de l’accalmie, ont-ils pris le risque d’un tel affrontement qui risque de renchérir sur le prix du pétrole et de s’étendre à tout l’Irak ? Dans le même temps se sont déclenchés des affrontements meurtriers dans plusieurs banlieues de Bagdad, dont Sadr City pour empêcher que l’étau se referme sur Bassora.

Pourquoi, aux rivalités habituelles pour la mainmise sur Bassora, prendre dans cette période le risque d’un embrasement ? Car la nouveauté de la période c’est qu’un nouveau seuil a été franchi puisque jusqu’ici la bataille opposait entre eux deux milices chiites, et désormais c’est l’armée officielle irakienne qui s’en mêle. Cette fois, ce sont les forces de sécurité irakiennes qui affrontent directement l’Armée du Mehdi. C’est même la première fois que celles-ci sont engagées dans une aussi vaste opération, baptisée « la charge du chevalier ».

C’est donc un test de la première importance pour le gouvernement de Nouri al-Maliki, qui appartient lui-même au Dawa. Si les armées américaine et britannique - les troupes anglaises ont évacué Bassora à la mi-décembre -, n’interviennent pas directement, elles apportent un soutien logistique aux troupes irakiennes. « « Il y a un an, les forces de sécurité irakiennes auraient eu du mal à engager cette action […] et le gouvernement à la mettre sur pied » », s’est félicité à Bagdad le général Kevin Bergner, porte-parole de l’armée américaine.

En fait nous sommes dans le cas de figure que l’on retrouve à peu près partout, l’armée nord-américaine fournit logistique, encadrement et teste la capacité de l’armée irakienne à mener la guerre civile. On a déjà connu cela au Vietnam quand l’armée nord-américaine prétendait se retirer.

Ce qui confirme cette stratégie du chaos et de la guerre civile est que Moqtar el Sadr avait choisi la pacification et la trêve, chose qu’il fallait empêcher à tout prix. Tous les partis chiites sont plus ou moins liés à l’Iran mais Moqtar el Sadr l’est plus que d’autres et donc l’attaque qu’il subit a probablement un lien avec la partie entre les Etats-Unis et l’Iran. Les Etats-Unis ont du mal à obtenir le feu vert du Conseil de Sécurité contre l’Iran, et avec les hostilités déclenchées contre la Chine, les rapports tendus avec la Russie, ils ont réfréné leurs ambitions. Il leur reste à provoquer le conflit entre Irak et Iran, attiser une crise permanente pour laisser couver la braise (5).

C’est en partant de la nature de la crise, de la nécessité de la faire payer au reste de la planète, de continuer à s’approprier à n’importe quel prix les ressources énergétiques et minérales que l’on peut comprendre la stratégie des Etats-Unis, et pas en inventant qu’ils veulent instaurer naïvement paix et démocratie et qu’ils n’y arrivent pas. Et quand on observe ce que cherchent réellement les candidats à l’élection présidentielle étasunienne, en particulier Mac Cain (6), mais aussi la majorité du camp Démocrate, on se dit que cela a peu de chances de s’arrêter avec le départ de Bush.

Danielle Bleitrach
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(1) Les Etats-Unis cherchent à développer partout ce qu’ils ont accompli face à l’ex-URSS, un type de désagrégation des marges, un dynamitage interne comme dans l’ex-Yougoslavie. Les récents événements tant en Amérique latine avec la Colombie dans le rôle d’Israël, mais aussi au Tibet pour la Chine montrent la permanence du scénario et la manière dont ce scénario a besoin de terroristes, de paramilitaires y compris chez les « alliés » eux-mêmes chargés de véhiculer le désordre à l’intérieur de toutes les tentatives d’unités nationales ou de constitution de blocs régionaux capables de résister.

(2) Machiavel, le prince, oeuvres complètes, La Pléiade, p.295

(3) Le quotidien panarabe Al-Hayat cité par Courrier International au début mars 2008 ne voyait dans les 5 années de guerre et d’occupation étasunienne que Téhéran comme vainqueur.

(4) Au titre des curiosités de cette ville rebelle, il faut noter que de 869 à 883, Bassora a été le siège du Spartakus du Moyen Orient, des esclaves noirs de l’Empire Arabe, rassemblés par Ibn Mohamed, luttent victorieusement contre leurs oppresseurs. Ils s’emparent de la ville de Bassora (Basra), dans le Golfe Persique (Irak actuel) en 871. Ces esclaves y fondent un état communiste. Avec l’aide d’ouvriers et de pâtres, ils étendent leur pouvoir sur un large secteur de la Mésopotamie (Irak). Mais, ils sont finalement écrasés par les armées arabes unies. Sans vouloir en faire dire plus à l’histoire qu’elle ne dit, il faut souligner le fait que le choix chiite est aussi celui du refus du pouvoir, de la domination du califat, est-ce un hasard si le parti communiste irakien un des plus puissants de tout le Moyen orient s’implante en priorité dans les zones chiites.

(5) On remarquera que partout les Etats-Unis semblent avoir à coeur de laisser ces zones de conflits potentiels non résolus où sans intervenir directement, ils peuvent à chaque moment déclencher une situation favorisant une intervention militaire directe ou indirecte.

(6) Intervenant mercredi au Conseil des relations internationales à Los Angeles (Californie), John McCain, a qualifié la Russie de pays revanchard et a appelé à l’exclure du G8, rapporte le correspondant de RIA Novosti sur place. Insistant sur la nécessité de « faire face aux dangers émanant de la Russie revancharde », le candidat républicain a déclaré qu’il fallait modifier la composition du G8. « Nous devons commencer par garantir que le G8 - le groupe des pays les plus industrialisés du monde - redevienne le club des principales démocraties de marché, qu’il comprenne le Brésil et l’Inde, mais exclue la Russie », a-t-il poursuivi. Le candidat républicain à la présidence américaine a aussi exhorté à renforcer la solidarité au sein de l’Alliance de l’Atlantique Nord en réponse au comportement de la Russie.

AMERICANS, watch this video and read the REAL news!

Dead Remembered, Living Ignored

Occupations Are Not Won. They Are Ended
By John Perry

Link to watch the video:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19622.htm


Five years, four thousand dead troops, more than one million dead Iraqis.And not only are we still waiting to hear what the "noble cause" is, but we have yet to hear a definition of victory, or how we'll know when we've achieved it.

What's happening in Iraq is NOT a war. It's an illegal occupation following the illegal invasion of a country that posed no threat to the United States. Occupations are not won. They are ended. Which is why the Bush administration is calling it a war.

Please check out the links and pass it on.

THIS INSANITY MUST END.

2006 Johns Hopkins Iraq mortality study, conducted in conjunction with Al Mustansiriya University in Baghadad
http://www.jhsph.edu/publichealthnews...

Just Foreign Policy site - Numbers updated, approximate running total of Iraqi deaths
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/

ORB Study -- Updated January 2008
http://www.opinion.co.uk/Newsroom_...

Iraq Veterans Against the War -- Winter Soldier page
http://www.ivaw.org/wintersoldier

The Real News -- Check out their Winter Soldier Coverage and get on their mailing list
http://ww.therealnews.com/

DECEPTION AND DEFIANCE FROM U.S. ADMINISTRATION

DECEPTION AND DEFIANCE FROM U.S. ADMINISTRATION, NOT SADDAM HUSSEIN

by Malcolm Lagauche

On Sunday, May 16, 2004, Colin Powell, in an interview for NBC’s "Meet the Press," actually came clean about the deceit used to prime the U.S. public for a war against Iraq. He acknowledged that information fed to him and the CIA by Iraqi defectors about Iraqi mobile biological weapons facilities was untrue.

Powell said:

It turned out that the sourcing was inaccurate and wrong and in some cases deliberately misleading. And for that I am disappointed and I regret it.

Powell seemed to apologize to the American people and to the media. However, no apology from him or any U.S. official has ever been made to the Iraqis, whether to the former government or to the people, for lying that led to the destruction of the country and the deaths of more than a million.

The same defectors gave false information about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programs and they assured the U.S. government that Iraqis would welcome U.S. troops as liberators and that the Iraqi military would surrender en masse. In other words, everything they said was untrue.

One defector, Saeed al Haideri, said he worked at illegal chemical, biological and nuclear weapons facilities in Iraq. His information was widely spread among the U.S. administration. However, what was not mentioned is the scrutiny he underwent with the CIA and the results. Shortly after giving his information, Saeed was given a lie detector test that he failed conclusively. He was rejected as unreliable by U.S. intelligence agencies. Earlier that year, he was taken to Iraq to show U.S. officials the location of the illegal facilities. He could only show them factories that were known to be associated with the conventional Iraqi military. He did not identify any site with illegal weapons. In other words, he was a fraud.

Nine months after the CIA discredited Saeed’s input, the White House came out with a report called "A Decade of Deception and Defiance … Saddam Hussein’s Defiance of the United Nations." Unbelievably, the document used Saeed’s testimony as proof for its case about going to war against Iraq.

Even the New York Times was suckered in. In a front page article of December 20, 2001, the daily paper used information that was based on an interview with Saeed in Bankok, Thailand. It stated:

Mr. Saeed’s account gives new clues about the types and possible locations of illegal laboratories, facilities and storage sites that American officials and international inspectors have long suspected Iraq of trying to hide.

The article was re-printed or cited by various news media worldwide. Again, we have the age-old tale of a falsehood being read by everybody, while the retraction, if published at all, appears buried in the newspaper in 8-point type some time later.

The report itself is preposterous. Anyone reading it today will construe it as false propaganda. Even when it was published, there should have been enough signs to point to devious intentions that any good journalist could identify.

It would take an entire book to show the deception in this 21-page document, so I will only refer to a few items. Under the subtitle "Biological Weapons," the report stated:

In 2001, an Iraqi defector, Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri, said he had visited twenty secret facilities for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. Mr. Saeed, a civil engineer, supported his claims with stacks of Iraqi government contracts, complete with technical specifications.

We know today that this was a lie, but not one person contacted the Iraqi government to ask about Mr. Saeed. It is incredible to think that the U.S. government took the word of someone who just showed up with information without checking the background of the person. He told the administration what it wanted to hear.

Here’s another gem:

The al-Dawrah Foot and Mouth Disease Vaccine facility is one of the two known biocontainment level-three facilities in Iraq that have an extensive air handling and filtering system. In 2001, Iraq announced that it would begin renovating the plant without UN approval, ostensibly to produce vaccines that it could more easily and more quickly import through the U.N.
Sounds like a legitimate gripe, but if one knows the background, it appears to be a legitimate action on the part of the Iraqis.

For decades, there was no foot-and-mouth disease in Iraq because the country produced an excellent vaccine that it used with its own cattle as well as supplied for export to many nations.

In 1993, because of the U.N. resolutions, the Iraqis had to cease making the vaccine.

Within a few years, hoof-and-mouth disease became rampant in Iraq, destroying most of its cattle and denying the people a food source. Iraq, through the U.N., tried to import vaccine. Eventually, Iraq was able to order 100,000 liters of the vaccine, from a plant in Sudan. Guess what? Just before the order was ready for shipment, the facility was blown up by U.S. cruise missiles. Clinton ordered the plant’s destruction on the allegation that it was making chemical weapons. The incident was widely reported, but the actual reason for the destruction received scant publicity. Since the incident, the U.S. government has quietly compensated the factory owner. The real target was the vaccine, not chemical weapons.

In a further attempt to halt the spread of hoof-and-mouth disease, Iraq attempted to import live bulls to further the reproduction of cattle. Hoof-and-mouth disease is particularly deadly with male cattle.

On November 29, 1999, the U.S. stopped the order (contract No. 600787) for 15 live bulls from France. The reason given was that the bulls fell under the "dual-use" category of imports — items that could be used for either civilian or illegal military use by Iraq. It takes a vivid imagination to consider how live bulls could be used as a weapon of mass destruction.

Few people know or care to know of the entire scenario behind statements made by the U.S. administration. In this instance, it appeared that Iraq, by renovating the vaccine facility, was trying to bring its defunct biological weapons program back. However, the facts surrounding that statement show that the U.S. was attempting to continue to starve the Iraqi people, both from without and within.

Here’s another statement from the White House report that we all know today to be farcical, if the results of the war were not so devastating:

Saddam Hussein continues its attempts to procure mobile biological weapons laboratories that could be used for further research and development.

Notice that when talking about Saddam, the report used the word "its" instead of "his." Quotes from U.S. soldiers have shown that some use the word "it" or "its" instead of "him" or "his" in discussing the abuse of Iraqi POWs at the hands of Americans at Iraqi prisons. The de-humanizing of Iraqis continues.

Under the subtitle "Nuclear Weapons" comes this brilliant statement:

Saddam Hussein could build a nuclear bomb within months if he were able to obtain fissile material.

Any country on Earth could do the same. The wording made no reference to intent or desire; it said "could."

This report is laden with outright lies and many ambiguous statements. References given to the information are mostly from U.S. government sources, not independent agencies. And the words "supposedly," "allegedly" and "reported" are used liberally without documentation.

There is one underlying fact that makes this report even morevile: it is published in its entirety for anyone to read. Not one change has been made concerning the lies of Mr. Saeed and the truth that has emerged since its September 2002 publishing. Today, anyone can go to the White House website and read it or download it in a PDF file. The address is: www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/09/iraqdecade.pdf

This obscene pack of lies is still being used by the U.S. administration to justify its destruction of Iraq. The re-writing of Iraq’s history by Washington, D.C. is comprehensive and abhorrent.

http://www.malcomlagauche.com/id1.html