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POPSIraq: From One Dictator to Another? "Over a thousand Iraqis got killed and more than that number wounded just for a game of chess between warlords," Mohammad Alwan, a lawyer in Baghdad, told IPS. "All of them call for dissolving militias while they keep militias of their own. Most of those in power in the government are militia leaders."
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POPSMy Five Year Old Kid vs. Their Five Year Old War "I do not want to tell my kid when she's ten: this war has been going all of your life. I don't want to tell her that next year! I want to tell her, yes, there was a war for the first five years of your life, but then people had had enough! They knew voting for a fake anti-war candidate wasn't going to end the war, they knew watching TV and bitching about it wasn't going to end the war, and they finally voted with their feet. I want to tell my kid that on the fifth anniversary of the war, people said, ENOUGH! And hit the streets in San Francisco and in over forty other cities around the country, and reinvigorated an anti-war movement that brought the war to an end."
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POPS Iraq fears clash between Turkish troops and Peshmerga Present "rumours" in Turkish press: A new "secret pledge" was made between the U.S. and Turkey. According to this, U.S. forces support Turkey's military operations against PKK, while Turkey "secretly" accepts the task that was assigned to Turkey by the U.S. administration: Being the "new security force" in Iraq after the U.S. withdrawal. Truth or just rumours? Only time will tell.
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POPSTurkey threats lift rebel Kurds' profile The PKK started as a Marxist-Leninist group demanding an independent homeland, but shed socialist ideology with the end of the Cold War and says it seeks some degree of self rule, similar to that of Spain's semiautonomous Catalonia region. Arrested in 1999, PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan still enjoys a personality cult among sympathizers and is believed to send directives through lawyers from prison. But the tight control that characterized the PKK eroded. In 2004, it dropped a unilateral cease-fire. Last year, a splinter operation called the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons bombed Turkish tourist resorts. An Iranian Kurd group affiliated with the PKK is fighting Iran.
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POPSIraq warns Turkey over incursion "This would be a unilateral decision and that's why people are resisting that. "That's why the whole government of Iraq and the whole people of Iraq are united really not to see their sovereignty, their territorial integrity undermined by a friendly neighbouring country." The BBC's Jim Muir, in Baghdad, says there are fears of a collision between Turkish troops and the Iraqi Kurdish forces which control the area.
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POPSConflict on a Second Kurdish Front Like the P.K.K., the Iranian Kurds control much of the craggy, boulder-strewn frontier and routinely ambush patrols on the other side. But while the Americans call the P.K.K. terrorists, guerrilla commanders say P.J.A.K. has had “direct or indirect discussions” with American officials. They would not divulge any details of the discussions or the level of the officials involved, but they noted that the group’s leader, Rahman Haj-Ahmadi, visited Washington last summer. Biryar Gabar, one of 11 members of the group’s leadership, said there had been “normal dialogue” with American officials, declining specifics. One of his bodyguards said officials of the group met with Americans in Kirkuk last year.
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POPSWill Turkey invade northern Iraq? This has been talked loudly in Turkey since last month and it became a key subject of political parties & leaders, when there are less than two weeks to the early general elections. Many intellectuals, thinkers and columnists expressed their worries that such a "beyond-the-borders" military operation could disrupt the political processes and could even cast doubts on the elections.
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POPS“Promising Democracy, Imposing Theocracy" Amy Goodman interviews the writers of a stunning report about the "unseen aspects" of the Iraq war: Theocracy and gender-based violence against women. Houzan Mahmoud , International Representative, Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq. She is speaking about gender-based violence in Iraq before the Commission on the Status of Women at the UN today. Yifat Susskind , communications director of MADRE. She is speaking about gender-based violence in Iraq before the Commission on the Status of Women at the UN today. See the introduction below and read the entire transcript of the interview at Democracy Now! website. Don't miss it.
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POPSIs Bush Iraq-ing Iran? Pham Binh from MRZine writes in his latest article: The Bush administration's goal is to roll back and contain Iran's influence in the Middle East. Military encirclement, saber-rattling, veiled threats, diplomatic isolation, provocations, and economic pressure are all means to this end. So if regime change is not the aim, is war with Iran on the agenda? Yes. The very success of the Bush administration's aggressive rollback and contain policy is what might lead to war. This requires some explanation.
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