IRAQI TURKMEN FRONT: THE GOVERNMENT OF IRAQ HAS FAILED IN ENSURING THE SECURITY OF IRAQI TURKMEN

25 ARALIK 2012

The Iraqi Turkmen Front manifested that the Iraqi government had failed in ensuring the security of Turkmen and in protecting their territories. At the same time ITF emphasized that all the options for the protection of the properties and lives of Turkmen were available on the table.

At a press conference organized yesterday Deputy Head of Iraqi Turkmen Front and Member of  Selahattin Province Assembly Ali Haşim Muhtaroğlu demanded that the Iraqi government reviews the balance of security of the commanders responsible for security in these regions and that the Turkmen be given an active role.

Muhtaroğlu repeated his proposition to establish a force consisting of the local population and emphasized that Turkmen should be one of the pillars of this force.

Hasan Turan repeated his  appeal to the United Nations in Iraq to open an office in the Turkmen region. Turan demanded that the UN focus on the planned terror attacks organized against the Turkmen people. Turan indicated that the attacks of terror against Turkmen were not fully reported in the last UN report and that the Turkmen were exposed to an organized conspiracy to obliterate the Turkmen presence.

The statement read by ITF Human Rights Bureau Officer Rüştü Çelebi reported that explosives attacks carried out during the past year 46 Turkmen had been victims of assassination, 12 Turkmen had been abducted while 68  had been martyred in bomb attacks.

ÜLKEM GİDİYOR - ARİF NAZIM

Mystery in Iraq

Are US Munitions to Blame for Basra Birth Defects?

By Alexander Smoltczyk

Christian Werner/ DER SPIEGEL

The guns have been silent in Iraq for years, but in Basra and Fallujah the number of birth defects and cancer cases is on the rise. Locals believe that American uranium-tipped munitions are to blame and some researchers think they might be right.

It sounds at first as if the old man were drunk. Or perhaps as though he had been reading Greek myths. But Askar Bin Said doesn't read anything, especially not books, and there is no alcohol in Basra. In fact, he says, he saw the creatures he describes with his own eyes: "Some had only one eye in the forehead. Or two heads. One had a tail like a skinned lamb. Another one looked like a perfectly normal child, but with a monkey's face. Or the girl whose legs had grown together, half fish, half human."

The babies Askar Bin Said describes were brought to him. He washed them and wrapped them in shrouds, and then he buried them in the dry soil, littered with bits of plastic and can lids, of his own cemetery, which has been in his family for five generations. It's a cemetery only for children.

Though they are small, the graves are crowded so tightly together that they are almost on top of one another. They look as if someone had overturned toy wheelbarrows full of cement and then scratched the names and dates of death into it before it hardened. In many cases, there isn't even room for the birth date. But it doesn't really matter, because in most cases the two dates are the same.

There are several thousand graves in the cemetery, and another five to 10 are added every day. The large number of graves is certainly conspicuous, says Bin Said. But, he adds, there "really isn't an explanation" for why there are so many dead and deformed newborn babies in Basra.

Others, though, do have an idea why. According to a study published in September in the Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology, a professional journal based in the southwestern German city of Heidelberg, there was a sevenfold increase in the number of birth defects in Basra between 1994 and 2003. Of 1,000 live births, 23 had birth defects.

Double and Triple Cancers

Similarly high values are reported from Fallujah, a city that was fiercely contested in the 2003 war. According to the Heidelberg study, the concentration of lead in the milk teeth of sick children from Basra was almost three times as high as comparable values in areas where there was no fighting.

Continued:

Internal Political Balances in North Iraq and Future of the Strategic Alliance

ORSAM Report No: 140 Internal Political Balances in North Iraq and Future of the Strategic Alliance

The Strategic agreement is the name of the document alleged to have been signed between KDP and PUK in 2006, and to have designated the conditions of strategic alliance between the two parties. The strategic agreement, which was considered as the cornerstone of the alliance between KDP and PUK for a long period of time, has been criticized since 25 July 2009 and its amendment has also been brought up to the agenda. According to KDP, the strategic agreement should be revised, the share of PUK should be reduced, and the agreement should be amended again if needed. According to PUK, this agreement is not an electoral alliance between the two parties, but a long-term agreement. The balance of power in the region should not be handled simply within the framework of the number of votes and the distribution of power in the parliament. The breakdown of PUK and the formation of Gorran, strengthening KDP, internal conflicts of Islamist movements launched the destruction process of the dual structure in North Iraq since 1990s.

This agreement will not be broken as long as Jalal Talabani is alive. However, before the elections to be held, the rate of deputies and also the rate of distribution of their offices might change as a result of the agreement between Talabani and Barzani.
Contents
Presentation

Abstract

Introduction

1. Strategic Alliance as the Key of Dual Structure in North Iraq

2. Potential Political Developments to Take Place in the Region in the Near Future

Interviews
1. Interview with Shaho Saeed, Spokesman of the Gorran (Change) Party
2. Interview with Muhammad Tawfiq Rahim, Director of External Relations of Gorran (Change) Movement
3. Interview with Mohammad Ahmad, Politburo Member of Kurdistan Islamic Union (KIU)
4. Interview with Sadi Ahmet Pire, Politburo Member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK)

Full text

21 December 2012

To The Americans Who Are Questioning The Death Of The Children In Connecticut

A moving piece by

Nesreen Melek

http://www.countercurrents.org/melek211212.htm

21 December, 2012

I was truly touched by the tears your president shed during his speech because of the killing the twenty beautiful children and the six remarkable adults as he called them. He reminded me of the tears I shed watching my country ruined by the shock and awe bombing during the last war on Iraq almost ten years ago.

You gathered to mourn the death of those kids but when the war was launched, my sister who lived in the states that time and I cried alone as our family members were still in Iraq and we didn’t know what happened to them. The American missiles didn’t differentiate between children and adults during the war, all Iraqis were exposed to death all days long.

No one offered us condolences for the loss of our country, our dreams and our hopes for good days to come. We were alone with our grief; the whole world watched the continuous bombing in silence. Some people protested but their voices weren’t heard. The leaders of the Middle East watched their brothers and sisters killed, your military bases were on their lands yet they did nothing to stop you from the war.

Your President called the kids who were killed at the school by names. Our children who were killed by the American bombs had no names. I remember a picture of bodies of small kids covered with blood and piled on the back of a truck, those kids were killed during the bombing of a small city in Iraq. No apologies where given to their parents or to the Iraqis for taking the lives of these kids... there were no teddy bears and no candles...

Commemorating the assassination of YOUSSEF KHORSHID ORANKAY, a Turkmen judge in Mosul

It is with great sadness that we commemorate the anniversary of the killing of our cousin, Youssef Khorshid Orankay.


On 22nd December 2003 our cousin Youssef, who was an investigating judge in Mosul, was shot several times by'unknown gunmen' as he left his office and was walking home.


Youssef was born in Kerkuk in 1947, he was married and had 6 children, 2 girls and 4 boys. 

He was an Iraqi patriot and a caring husband and father. 


The criminals who carried out his assassination have not been found.

Aid to the Turkmen victims of terrorist attacks in Tuz Khurmatu

The wounds of terror victims in Tuzhurmatu are bandaged

20 ARALIK 2012

http://www.kerkuk.net/eng/?p=8263

Financial aid was made to the terror victims in Tuzhurmatu by the local administration.

As a consequence of the initiative of the Deputy Head of Iraqi Turkmen Front (ITF) and

Member of Selahattin Province Assembly Ali Haşim Muhtaroğlu and Deputy Selahattin

Governor Ahmet Koca the local administration of Selahattin dispatched 100 million
dinars for the terror victims. The Financial aid was distributed to those affected by the

terror attacks in the district.

TUZ KHURMATU : The 3 Children killed by an explosion were laid to rest

The three children killed by an explosion were laid to rest in tears

20 ARALIK 2012

The three children, two of which were siblings, killed by an explosion which took place

in Tuzhurmatu district of Selahattin province were laid to rest in tears.

Hundreds of citizens participated in the funeral ceremony arranged for 11 year old 

Hüseyin Mehdi Hasan and his 7 year old sister Melek Mehdi Hasan and their

11 year old cousin Aliye Azgar Kemal. The desolate cries of Father Mehdi Hasan 

who lost both of his children simultaneous were heartbreaking.

http://www.kerkuk.net/eng/?p=8256